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Auction: 7022 - Orders, Decorations, Medals & Militaria
Lot: 1213

A Great War Bronze Memorial Plaque to Captain T.S. Rowlandson, [M.C.], Yorkshire Regiment, the Well-Known Football Association Amateur International Great War Bronze Memorial Plaque ´Thomas Sowerby Rowlandson´, together with the following original documentation and related items: - Parchment Memorial Scroll - M.I.D. Certificate, dated 30.11.1915 - Telegram of Condolence to recipient´s sister, from the Keeper of the Privy Purse, on behalf of the King and Queen, dated 27.9.1916 - Telegram from Territorial Records York informing recipient´s sister that Rowlandson had been killed in action, dated 18.9.1916 - Field Post Card, from recipient to his sister, dated 14.9.1916 - Copy of recipient´s Last Will and Testament - Envelope containing a dried and pressed ´posy from his grave picked by Dorothy, Sept. 1921´ - Letter to recipient´s brother-in-law from a fellow officer who was in the attack that led to Rowlandson´s death, dated 15.4.1917 - Captured German Field Post Card, dated 29.4.1917 -newspaper cuttings, some of which picture Rowlandson in action for Corinthians F.C., and other ephemera (lot) Estimate £ 200-250 M.C. London Gazette 14.1.1916 Lieutenant (temporary Captain) Thomas Sowerby Rowlandson, Yorkshire Regiment (Territorial Force) M.I.D. London Gazette 1.1.1916 Rowlandson, Temporary Lieutenant (Temporary Captain) T.S. Captain Thomas Sowerby Rowlandson, M.C., of Newton Morrell, Darlington; educated at Charterhouse and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he won a blue at Association Football; joined the famous Corinthians F.C. and played regularly for them in goal and later for Sunderland; he also took a team representing England to South Africa, Budapest, Norway, Sweden and Canada and was a F.A. Amateur International, ´He was a very great goalkeeper, probably about the best amateur in that position ever seen´ (Newspaper cutting included in lot refers); J.P. for North Riding; with the outbreak of the Great War he gave his family home over to the Red Cross to act as a hospital; commissioned Lieutenant 2/4th Battalion Yorkshire Regiment, 5.9.1914; served during the Great War with the regiment in the French Theatre of War from, 18.4.1915, ´he was present at the Second Battle of Ypres, at Hooge, and later on at Hill 60´ (Newspaper cutting included in the lot refers); transferred 1/4th Battalion Yorkshire Regiment (North Riding Territorials), January 1915; Captain 8.10.1915 (Mentioned in Sir John French´s Despatches, January 1915); and was serving with 1/4th Battalion on the Somme when he was killed in action, 15.9.1916, ´assembled in Eye and Swansea Trenches for attack between High Wood and Martinpuich (14/9). Went into action alongside 1/5th Green Howards (15/9) - their 3rd objective (Martin Alley) taken by 10am. Bombed eastward along prue Trench (16/9)´ (British Battalions on the Somme, R. Westlake, refers); Rowlandson´s Adjutant later wrote of him, ´I have always thought him the finest type of Englishman I have ever known, and his death was just as fine as his life. He died where of all places I think he would have chosen if it had to be - on the parapet of a German trench at the head of his men. A Bosche bomb hit him on the shoulder, death must have been instantaneous. No words of mine can tell you what he was to us, and how the battalion will miss him.´ (Newspaper cutting included in lot refers); he is buried at Becourt Military Cemetery, Becordel-Becourt.

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£420