Rank: Private 404 Regiment: 2nd Regiment South African Infantry Died: 12 October 1916 Parish: Budleigh Salterton Local Memorials: Budleigh Salterton War Memorial, St Peter's Church War Memorial Other Memorial: Thiepval Memorial [Google] PDF Download: BRIGHT Percy
Born in Northlew, Devon to Joseph Bright and Margaret (Counter), Percy had a sister Lucy Beatrice. Sadly his father Joseph, who was a railway signalman, was killed in a railway accident at Yeoford Junction in January 1887, Exeter.
His mother married a William Hancock in 1888 and Percy is recorded as living with them in Crediton when aged 10 years. He then disappears from the UK records and is believed to have gone to South Africa. William Hancock, Margaret and Lucy Beatrice were living in Station Road, Budleigh Salterton by 1901 where Frederick Tom Blackburn, a photographer, was a lodger.
F T Blackburn and Lucy Beatrice Bright married in St Peter’s Budleigh Salterton in 1905 and it is he that took the photographs of the Budleigh men going to war displayed in an exhibition at the Fairlynch Museum in Budleigh Salterton.
As Lucy’s brother Percy was killed in 1916 it was she and Frederick Tom that would have put his name forward for inclusion on the war memorial.
He is remembered on the Budleigh Salterton War Memorial as well as the brass plaque in St Peter’s Church, and on the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme. There is a niece (born 1917) still alive and she has attended remembrance services over many years and was delighted to know that he had been remembered so well in Budleigh Salterton every year.
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