It’s very hard for us to appreciate today that, when the new year dawned on 1 January 1914, few people felt any particular sense of foreboding about the months ahead. True, it was a time of international tension in Europe, yet the situation at the start of 1914 was no worse than in previous years and in many ways the portents looked very favourable. And so for the first six months of 1914 life went on as normal, with people’s concerns being largely focussed on local matters.
In the county town of Hertford the spring of 1914 was dominated by one matter above all others – a grand historic pageant,1 held to celebrate the millenary of the town’s foundation by the Saxon King, Edward the Elder. The pageant was staged in the grounds of Hertford Castle, with the last performance taking place on Saturday 4 July. Once it was over, people could start thinking about other things, and for Hertford’s more affluent citizens that meant primarily their plans for the summer holidays.
This would have been particularly so in the case of Mr Owen Wightman and his wife Ethel, who lived in Bengeo. They were a well-travelled couple. In 1912 they had spent a happy fortnight in the Austrian Tyrol and they had decided to return to Austria for their summer holiday in 1914. They duly departed for the Continent round about 11 July. Seven highly eventful weeks would pass before they saw Hertford again, and – happily for us – their adventures would be recounted to a reporter from the Hertfordshire Mercury once they were safely home.
Owen and Ethel Wightman
Owen Wightman in the late 1920s
Owen Wightman was born in York in 1869. His father, William Arnett Wightman, was an eminent clergyman in the city and a minor canon of York Minster. In 1860 William married Emily Oldfield, whose family were wine merchants in the city, and over the following decade they raised a family of three girls and one son. Owen was educated at Radley College, near Abingdon in Oxfordshire. His father died in 1884 when Owen was 15. Owen subsequently attended Exeter College, Oxford. It’s not clear whether he intended to pursue a career in the church, but in the event he left without graduating and went into the brewing industry. After a period spent as a brewing pupil, he was appointed head brewer at the Forehill Brewery, Ely in 1892.
Three years later Owen married Ethel Maria Hall. Ethel lived at Alton in Hampshire, where her father was a wealthy banker. Alton was an important brewing centre; one of Ethel’s brothers was engaged in the trade, so the couple may well have met through the brewing connection. They had no children.
For some reason the Ely locality did not agree with Owen’s health and for that reason they moved to Hertford in 1897. There he joined a long established firm of maltsters, John Jasper & Jasper Gripper, whose premises were located alongside the Lee Navigation at the Wharf, near Old Cross. With Owen’s arrival the firm was reconstituted as J. Gripper, Son, & Wightman. Owen and Ethel made their home in Bengeo, in a villa called The Garden House at the north end of Warren Park Road. It was a substantial property; the grounds were 2.4 acres in extent, while the chauffeur’s house, garage and kitchen garden were located on a separate plot in New Road.
Owen had many hobbies and recreations, which included shooting, fishing, gardening and curling, but his greatest love was rowing. He rowed for Radley College at Henley and got his Trials cap at Oxford. He and Ethel were also active supporters of the Conservative Party. At this time the social life of towns such as Hertford tended to be organised along political lines and Hertford contained several clubs affiliated to the Conservative and Liberal parties. The most notable of the Conservative Clubs was the Primrose League, and both Owen and Ethel served as members of the Executive Council for the Hertford “Habitation”. Ethel also served as Warden for the Habitation’s Bengeo Ward.
The couple also enjoyed foreign travel. At the time of their departure for the Continent in July 1914 Owen was 45 years old, while Ethel was nine years his senior. Their immediate destination was the region around Linz. They spent a fortnight there, enjoying the lakes and mountains and travelling from place to place. They then decided to go south across the Alps and down towards the Adriatic coast. After a journey of some 150 miles, they came to a mountainous district known as Carniola, about 40 miles north of Trieste. There, on Friday 24 July, they booked into a hotel that stood beside a picturesque lake known as the Wocheinersee.2
The Wightmans settled into their hotel and spent the next day walking in the hills around the lake. On returning to the hotel at about 6.00 in the evening they found a crowd of people gathered at the entrance. Some large printed notices had been put up and these were being read with intense interest. The people of Carniola were mostly Serbo-Croats and the newspapers and notices were all printed in their language. On making enquiries, the Wightmans learnt that the notices contained instructions for mobilization within the district. They had, in other words, unwittingly chosen to take their holiday in a war zone.
Austrian action against Serbia
This situation was the culmination of a series of events which had begun some three weeks earlier on Sunday 28 June – the day before the opening performance of Hertford’s historic pageant. This was the news that the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne, had been assassinated while visiting the town of Sarajevo in the Austrian province of Bosnia. The Mercury had included a brief report about it in its issue of 4 July, sandwiched between an item about a suicide in Hitchin and a public notice concerning impending repair work on the main roads in the county. People in Britain, as elsewhere in Europe, reacted with horror at such a foul crime and their sympathies lay overwhelmingly with the House of Hapsburg and the 84-year old Emperor Franz Josef. The more informed reader would have gathered that the assassination had been carried out by Bosnian nationalists and that, according to the Austrian Government, the assassins had been actively supported by Serbia – an independent kingdom adjacent to Bosnia, regarded by the rest of Europe as a pariah state ever since its King and Queen had been murdered in a coup d’etat in 1903.
For most Britons such details would have passed them by. To them it was just some business involving “Serbian murderers” in a country somewhere on the far side of Europe. The assassination, however, was to have far reaching consequences. The Austro-Hungarian Empire encompassed a huge patchwork of provinces and nationalities in Central Europe and the upper Balkans. It contained 40 million people, of whom three-fifths were Slavs. Despite this preponderance, the Slavs were excluded from playing any part in the government and bureaucracy. This generated considerable nationalist unrest in the South Slav province of Bosnia. Serbia acted as a magnet for these nationalist movements, while its capital Belgrade served as a centre for the disseminating inflammatory propaganda.
The Austrian Government thus saw the assassination of the heir to the Austrian throne as the perfect pretext for crushing Serbia once and for all, even though there was no evidence that the Serbian Government had played any part in its organisation. The major problem the Austrians faced in taking reprisals against Serbia, was the risk of provoking a war with the Serbs’ patron, the Russian Emperor, Czar Nicholas II. To deter the Czar from intervening, it was essential that the Austrian Emperor secure the support of his ally, the German Emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm II.
On 5 July the Austrian Ambassador in Berlin met with the Kaiser to deliver a personal letter from Emperor Franz Josef. The Kaiser gave a very firm response that Germany would support Austria in pursuing her claims against Serbia, and would stand by her even if Russia intervened. With that assurance, the Austrians set about drawing up an ultimatum to present to Serbia. This process took three weeks and would have been going on while the Wightmans were exploring the countryside around Linz.
Rumours soon began to circulate among the Foreign Ministries of Europe that some sort of action against Serbia was being prepared, but the German and Austrian governments both denied this was the case. It thus came as a considerable shock when the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia was finally handed over at 5.00pm on 23 July. The ultimatum contained 10 demands, each of which infringed Serbian sovereignty. The Serbs were given 48 hours to reply.
Most European governments were astounded at the severity of the ultimatum. They were even more astonished – though also greatly relieved – when on 25 July the Serbs accepted all but one of the Austrian demands. The Serbs also indicated their willingness to submit the outstanding demand to the Great Powers for arbitration. This was the last thing the Austrians wanted so, since the ultimatum had not been accepted in its entirety, they immediately severed diplomatic relations with Serbia and ordered the partial mobilization of their forces on the Serbian front. For the moment, however, they refrained from actually declaring war.
The journey through Austria
The impact of mobilization was soon felt in the countryside around the Wocheinersee. The chief industry in that part of Austria was the felling and sawing of timber, and on their walks around the lake the Wightmans had remarked upon the numerous wagons that passed them by, carting loads of sawn timber to the railway station. However, by midday on Monday 27 July every man under the age of 40 and every horse in the district had disappeared, while the wagons were left abandoned by the roadside. Over the following days the wagons were dragged by women and old men to the nearest house. Ethel later told the Mercury reporter that:
It was a very pathetic sight to see all the women in tears at having parted from their men. The harvest was in full swing and the old men, women, and children were to be seen in the fields dragging the wagons which had been left by the men and horses. The little babes were rolled up in bundles of clothes and left by the side of the corn fields to cry and sleep whilst their mothers went to gather the harvest.
The Wightmans, of course, were in a great dilemma as to what they should do, for with each day that passed, the news grew more alarming. On 25 July both Germany and Russia had begun to prepare for mobilization. On 28 July Austria formally declared war on Serbia. Belgrade lay on the borders of the Empire on the south bank of the Danube, and on 29 July the Austrians bombarded the city from their side of the river. The Czar meanwhile kept vacillating between full and partial mobilization.
The Wightmans’ inclination was to start for home immediately, but the nearest railway station was an hour’s drive from their hotel, and they were told that all the trains and telegraphs were currently being monopolized by the military. In any case, at that stage, despite the ominous reports of German and Russian mobilization, the conflict was still seen as one in a long line of Balkan wars. The hotel proprietors were “cultured Viennese” and they told the Wightmans that the war would only last a few weeks, because the Serbians would be immediately suppressed. Furthermore, the Wightmans themselves did not feel in any personal danger. Although relations between Britain and Germany had become increasingly strained over the past decade, there was no such animosity between Britain and Austria, and the hotel proprietors showed them every kindness.
Finally on Thursday 30 July the Wightmans were able to secure transport to the railway station, which lay on the main line from Vienna to Trieste. There they found the troop trains still running, the majority of the men being transported in cattle trucks. The soldiers were all in a great state of excitement, “suffering badly from war fever.” The passenger coaches in Austria consisted of one long corridor with no side doors, and on every coach the long metal wall was covered in chalk graffiti. The favourite subject for illustration seemed to be King Peter of Serbia suspended from a gibbet. Some of the accompanying inscriptions were translated for the benefit of the Wightmans, though they soon decided it was better to be left in ignorance.
Having finally obtained seats on a north-bound train, they had to decide on the best way home. It would clearly be unwise to try and get home via Germany. They decided, therefore, to head due west through the Austrian Tyrol and on to Switzerland. At that time the Tyrol was not mobilising and so, having successfully changed trains, the Wightmans at first found the journey comparatively easy. However, the normal time table was greatly disrupted owing to train cancellations and they were unable to proceed further than Oberdrauburg (Fig. 2).
The following day (Friday 31 July) they set off once again. They soon learnt, however, that mobilization was now underway in the Tyrol. The train was brought to a halt at Bruneck and there the Wightmans were obliged to disembark. It was clearly going to be some while before civilians would be able to use the line again. They would, therefore, have to see if they could secure some other kind of conveyance.
Their aim was to get to the main line that ran from Verona to Innsbruck. It lay about 20 miles due west of Bruneck, but for some reason, instead of proceeding in that direction, the Wightmans decided to make a detour to the south, following a route that would take them over the Dolomite mountain range. It was an area they had explored in 1912, so perhaps that influenced their decision.
Owen managed to find someone who was willing to drive them as far as Arabba, a town located on the crest of the Dolomites. A military road ran through Arabba and continued westwards to Bozen where it met the railway line to Innsbruck. A motorbus service, called an “automobile poste”, ran along this road and, if they could secure transport on one of these automobiles, they should be able to reach Predazzo by the end of the day. The Wightmans knew Predazzo well, for in 1912 they had spent a happy fortnight there. Owen managed to telegraph ahead and was able to secure accommodation in one of its hotels.
They left Bruneck at 6.00 the next morning (Saturday 1 August) and headed up into the Dolomites. They travelled for some 20 miles, the road winding its way up to a height of over 5000 feet. Even here, there was no escape from the approaching storm, for all along their route, going in the opposite direction, were long lines of horses, being led down the mountains en route for the war.
The situation at Arabba was equally disturbing. They learnt that the normal passenger service run by the “automobile poste” was due to be stopped and the buses diverted to the needs of the military. The Wightmans, therefore, were extremely fortunate to get a place on the last automobile to run on the route. The normal capacity of these vehicles was 20 passengers, but now more than 30 people were packed in, most of them locals on their way to Predazzo. As the bus proceeded on its way the Wightmans learnt, somewhat to their alarm, that on the previous trip two English ladies had been turned off to make way for soldiers, and had had to proceed the rest of the way on foot. The Wightmans, however, were spared such a fate and reached Predazzo safely.
Once there, however, they found the place totally transformed from the picturesque Alpine town they had known previously. Now it was a military camp, with the whole town placed under martial law. Furthermore, on reaching their hotel, they found that, although their room had been retained for them, the hotel was now serving as the headquarters of a top-ranking Austrian General and his staff, and that every other room in the hotel was occupied by officers. At first this did not seem a problem, for their intention was to travel on to Bozen the following day. However, Bozen was 50 miles away and the hotelier advised them to remain at Predazzo until the first rush of mobilization was over. They would then have a much better chance of securing a conveyance.
Though they followed this advice, the Wightmans nonetheless found themselves in a truly bizarre situation. For, despite being foreign civilians, they were free to share the dining room with the Austrian officers. The staffing arrangements at the hotel had been thrown into chaos by the war situation, with the male waiters being called up and the maids all fleeing in terror to their homes. Two women had now been brought in from the town, one to make the beds and the other to serve the meals. As a consequence, the Wightmans were waited on alternately by the one maid and by the orderlies, just as if they were part of the officers’ mess.
At the same time the news was becoming ever more alarming. The dispute between Austria and Serbia had brought into play the various treaties and alliances which existed amongst the European Powers, and now the Central Powers of Germany and Austria were ranged against the Entente Powers of Russia and France. There had been several crises of this kind during the past decade, but on each occasion a conference of the Powers had been convened and war averted. For a moment it had seemed as if the current crisis could be resolved in this way. However, all the Great Powers had detailed plans for the mobilization of their armies and once these were put into effect, they could not be stopped.
On Saturday 1 August, as they arrived in Predazzo, the Wightmans learnt that Germany had declared war on Russia. More news filtered through to them the following day, though it was not at all accurate. The officers at the hotel told them that, according to the official news from Vienna, Belgrade had been taken by the Austrians. Some 1100 Serbians had been killed, as against only 10 Austrians killed and 200 wounded. None of this was true. The Wightmans were also shown an official telegram from Vienna, informing the General that the Czar had been assassinated, which caused great elation amongst the officers. This news too was quite untrue.
The situation was extremely disturbing for the Wightmans personally. As British tourists they had always enjoyed excellent relations with their Austrian hosts, but with war fever now running so high, they could be turned out of their hotel at any time. Furthermore, if Germany had declared war on Russia, France could soon be drawn into the conflict and if that happened, what would be the position in Britain? Over the past decade Britain and France had drawn closer together in the face of German belligerence. Many Britons would feel that, although the country was under no treaty obligation to go to the aid of France, the moral case was overwhelming. Austria was allied to Germany, so if Britain went to war with Germany, the Wightmans would suddenly find themselves enemy aliens.
For the moment all they could do was remain as unobtrusive as possible and they spent that Sunday walking in the woods. Early the next morning the chambermaid came to see Ethel and whispered to her that the General had received very bad news. She advised the Wightmans to get away as quickly as possible. Owen eventually managed to secure transport in a private motor-car and they set off for Bozen. They were challenged several times en route, but on each occasion the soldiers allowed them to pass because they were English, and so they managed to complete the 50-mile journey without any untoward incident.
They reached Bozen at 4.00pm to find the railway station crowded with British and American tourists, who – like the Wightmans – were anxious to get to Switzerland. Nobody seemed to know whether any more trains would be running, and so all they could do was sit on their luggage and wait. A north-bound train at last pulled in to the station and, though it seemed to be full already, about a hundred more piled on to it. The Wightmans were fortunate to be amongst their number. Clearly, there was very little chivalry evident amongst the British and American tourists, for some 50 of their countrymen were left behind on the platform.
The Wightmans reached Innsbruck shortly before midnight and, after a three hour wait, they caught the train to Switzerland. It was only later they realised how fortunate they’d been in their timing. The train they’d caught at Bozen was the last one to run to Innsbruck, and theirs would be the penultimate train to run from Innsbruck to Switzerland.
Stranded in Switzerland
The Wightmans’ plan was to travel straight through Switzerland to Basle. From there they would take the first available train to Paris and then make their way north to one of the Channel ports. By now, however, it was Tuesday 4 August and by the time the Wightmans reached Basle in the late morning, the war situation had changed dramatically.
In broad terms, the situation was the logical consequence of Germany’s “War Plan”. It had been devised in 1906 by a former Chief of the German General Staff, Count Alfred von Schlieffen. It was based on the assumption that, if Germany went to war, it would be fighting on two fronts against France and Russia. France was the strongest and best organised of the two. Germany’s aim, therefore, must be to destroy France first in a swift knock-out blow. To this end Schlieffen allocated seven-eighths of the Germany Army to the offensive in the west; the remaining eighth would fend off any Russian attack from the east. He estimated that the French campaign would take six weeks, after which German forces could be redirected against Russia.
Germany had declared war on Russia on 1 August in support of her ally Austria. At that stage she had no quarrel whatsoever with France. However, the Schlieffen Plan did not make provision for a war against Russia alone. Thus, once the Plan was put into effect, the German Government was obliged to declare war on France, which it duly did on 3 August. Another crucial aspect of the Schlieffen Plan was that, in the interests of speed, the German Army would bypass the massive fortress chain along the Franco-German frontier by going through neutral Belgium. It was this act which finally ended the indecision of the British Government and which caused them to declare war on Germany at midnight on 4 August.
At the same time the Swiss mobilized their entire army, so as to enforce the country’s neutrality and to prevent her frontiers from being crossed by either French or German troops. Basle was located close to the point where Switzerland, France and Germany met; in fact, the German frontier was only a mile-and-a-half from the city. By making for Basle, therefore, the Wightmans had once again unwittingly put themselves close to the theatre of war. They arrived in the city to find that all trains to France had been cancelled, and that as foreign nationals, they would be obliged to remain in Basle until further notice. They were destined to be shut up in the city for the next three weeks, while the opening battles of World War One unfolded to the north.
Germany declared war on Belgium on 3 August and the lead units of its Army crossed the frontier the following day. On 5 August the Germans attacked the fortress system at Liege. Belgian resistance was much stronger than anticipated, but by 14 August the German columns were pouring through Liege and heading for the French border. The French meanwhile had put their own war plan into operation. Known as “Plan XVII”, its aim was to meet any German threat by launching an offensive into Alsace-Lorraine – territories which had been ceded to Germany at the end of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71. The Germans were fully aware that, in the event of war, the French would initiate Plan XVII and they were happy for them to do so, for if the Schlieffen Plan met its objectives, the French Army would be effectively encircled. Their tactic, therefore, was to remain on the defensive along the Alsace border, but to keep the French fully engaged.
The campaign became known as the Battle of the Frontiers and it went on throughout the first three weeks of August. During this time the French Army took several initiatives, but the one of most relevance to the Wightmans was the fighting which occurred at Mulhouse, just across the frontier from Basle. The French Army, under the command of General Bonneau, crossed the German border on 7 August and quickly seized the town of Altkirch. The following day Bonneau took Mulhouse without opposition, an event which sparked off wild celebrations in France. The Germans, however, mounted a counter-attack early on the morning of 9 August and Bonneau was forced to withdraw.
The Wightmans witnessed the fighting from the top of a hill a mile or so out of Basle. By day they could see villages burning and by night the sky was lit up with flashlights, and all the while the heavy guns kept up a constant barrage. The atmosphere in Basle became extremely tense, for at this location the Rhine was crossed by three bridges and the Swiss filled the manholes on the bridges with dynamite, just in case the combatants tried to gain an advantage by crossing the border. The bridges were guarded at all times and movement across them was very restricted.
After 9 August the fighting moved further north along the Franco-German frontier. It went on for another three weeks but failed to achieve any of its objectives, and by the end of August the French were back at their starting positions, having suffered great casualties. Fortunately, the Germans had proved unable to meet the exhausting time-table of the Schlieffen Plan, and this gave the French and their British allies time to halt the German advance at the First Battle of the Marne which began on 5 September. The Germans subsequently retreated to the River Aisne where they established a defensive line.
The escape through France
While all these massive armies were wheeling and fighting across north-east France, the Wightmans remained incarcerated at Basle. Even when the actual fighting moved away from their immediate area, they found their situation extremely uncomfortable. For although Switzerland was nominally neutral, the sympathies of the people of Basle lay entirely in the German camp, partly because of their close proximity to the German frontier but also because of their extensive trade relations. Thus any war news the Wightmans managed to pick up was entirely to the detriment of France and the aggrandisement of Germany.
Even more uncomfortable were the restrictions placed on all French and British nationals. They had to obtain a passport signed by the British and French Consuls, and were required to be indoors by a certain hour each night. They were not to criticise or comment upon any military movements they might see. Wherever they went, they found themselves closely watched by the military. Several British subjects were arrested during the first week of August, while a doctor staying in the Wightmans’ hotel was arrested four times on suspicion of being a spy. In the heightened atmosphere of the time this was no joke. The city was full of refugees from the fighting in Alsace and during the Wightmans’ time in Basle, a number of these people were shot for spying, including some priests and women. On the plus side, however, the Wightmans found the Swiss hotel staff as courteous as ever. Ethel later made this point to the Mercury reporter. “[They] were very good to us,” she said. “Paper money was no good and we had to live on credit for a week. But they always trust the English, knowing they will be sure to get paid in due course.”
As mentioned above, the war had been brought about, to some extent, by the alliances which existed amongst the European Powers. During the pre-war period Italy had allied herself with the Central Powers of Germany and Austria, but when war actually broke out, Italy chose to remain neutral. In retaliation, the Germans expelled all Italian nationals living within her borders, and 8000 of these refugees arrived in Basle totally destitute. Their treatment by the Swiss authorities was notably different to that meted out to the French and British nationals. Ethel told the Mercury that the Swiss were very kind to these people and found them food and shelter. “One of the women and three of the Italian children died one night whilst we were there,” she said. “One poor woman told me how she took refuge in a cellar at Mulhausen [Mulhouse] for twenty hours whilst the town was being bombarded, and she had a terrible experience.” The Wightmans heard other harrowing stories relayed by “the poor refugees from Alsace”, but the Mercury concluded that perhaps it was best “to draw a veil over these for the present.”
The Wightmans were just two amongst some 10,000 British subjects stranded in Switzerland who were desperate to get home. Their plight was the responsibility of the British Minister at Berne. During August he arranged for these people to be gathered together in 28 centres (one of which was Basle), from where they would be put on special trains to Paris. The people were warned that if they left their allotted centre, they would be left behind until all the other centres had been cleared. The Minister eventually succeeded in making arrangements with the Swiss and French Railway Companies to run 20 special trains, but their departure had to be delayed owing to the fighting in Alsace. Thus it was not until Sunday 23 August that the first train was able to depart. That particular train was reserved for British officers who were needed at the Front, plus other Government officials. The second train was reserved for invalids. The Wightmans were fortunate to get a place on the third train which departed from Basle on Tuesday 25 August.
Their route took them south away from the Franco-German border to Geneva, where they were transferred to a French train. By now there were some 850 people in the party. They crossed the border and proceeded by a circuitous route to Lyons. Their reception as they ran into the station was unforgettable, for the opposite platform was packed with French troops. Most were infantrymen known as Zouaves, who wore colourful uniforms comprising blue jackets with waistcoats and baggy red trousers. Their presence thus made for a very vivid spectacle. It was made even more memorable when the soldiers let out a thunderous cheer and sang the Marseillaise “with great gusto.” The British travellers, crammed together at the carriage windows, cheered in their turn and responded with God Save the King. The soldiers cheered once more and then dashed across the line to shake everybody by the hand. As Ethel told the Mercury reporter: “It was a moving scene, and consoling after our very pronounced pro-German treatment at Basle.”
After that the Wightmans’ journey was fairly straightforward. They travelled on from Lyons to Paris and then to Dieppe, from where they crossed to Folkestone. They reached London on the evening of Friday 28 August and arrived home in Bengeo the following day.
They returned to a country now whipped up into an extraordinary patriotic fervour. It was not surprising, therefore, that the Mercury should want to recount their story in great detail, for not only did it make dramatic reading but it reinforced the prevailing anti-German mood, particularly in regard to their treatment in Basle. It also provided plenty of scope for bolstering the nation’s morale. Owen, for example, told the Mercury that: “It was very pleasant to be able to take a five hours sea journey and not set eyes on a single man-of-war, yet we knew the British fleet was there to watch over us and afford a safe passage across the Channel.” He also remarked that, when they’d arrived home in Bengeo, they’d found it nice to have “the pleasure of meeting some smiling, honest English faces that we knew.” Ethel, in paying tribute to the kind treatment they’d received from the Austrian and Swiss hoteliers, concluded that: “Our little adventure therefore demonstrates that it is worth something to be English after all.”
The later years
The Wightmans continued to live at The Garden House in Bengeo for the rest of their lives, and took a keen interest in church, social and political affairs, at both the local and county level.
Owen remained a partner of J. Gripper, Son, & Wightman until his retirement in 1947, and during that time he became a prominent public figure. He served on trade organisations such as the Maltsters Association and the Brewers Society, and during World War One he was employed in government service at the Ministry of Food. The Ministry was formed in January 1917 in response to the growing threat to the nation’s food supply, caused in part by the German U-boat campaign. The Ministry’s efforts proved largely ineffectual until May when the first Viscount Rhondda was appointed as Food Controller. Under his leadership an extensive system of food control developed. He introduced many innovations, one of which was to place the management of the controls over a particular food in the hands of an expert. Owen was invited to become Controller of Brewing Materials. He served in this post for two years and was rewarded with a CBE in the New Year’s Honours of 1920.
In the post-war world Owen continued to play a leading role in the public affairs of the county. He joined the County Bench in 1918. He was an active supporter of the Conservative Party in the East Herts Division and served as Chairman of the Hertfordshire Conservative Association for 10 years. In 1936 he received a knighthood for his “political and public services in Hertfordshire.”
He remained a keen sportsman and always made a point of attending the Henley Regatta. In Bengeo he gave generous support to the local sports clubs and to the activities of the Working Men’s Club. He and Ethel were enthusiastic gardeners and took many awards for roses and carnations at the Royal Horticultural Society shows. The beauty of their garden at Bengeo became well known and a source of delight to the many friends they invited to their house during the summer months.
Ethel died in February 1938. Owen continued to live at The Garden House for another 10 years and died there in November 1948. They are both buried in the graveyard at Holy Trinity Church, just over the wall from where they lived for so many years.
Sources of Reference
Hertfordshire Mercury 5 September 1914; 3 January 1936; 12 & 19 November 1948
Notes:
1 Philip Sheail has produced a booklet on the pageant, “Hertford’s Grand Pageant 1914”, ISBN 978-0-9555684-2-8, available from Hertford Museum.
2 The area was subsequently incorporated within Yugoslavia and now forms part of Slovenia. The Wocheinersee is now more generally referred to as Lake Bohinj
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