Banstead
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Banstead Remembers
On Bank Holiday Monday, 3rd August, 1914,
Banstead’s 2nd XI played what was to be the
club’s last fixture for nearly five years, when they
faced Redhill ‘A’ at The Ring, Merstham.
Banstead won the toss and batted first. Despite
the best efforts of their opening batsman, Roland
Bentley, who carried his bat, the team were all out
before lunch with a total of just 96 runs, Redhill’s
F. Brown being the pick of the bowlers, taking 3
wickets for 13 runs.
Banstead dismissed Redhill’s top three
cheaply but then E.H.L. Nice dug in and gave “a
fine display of clean hitting”, making a century and
giving Redhill a lead after the first innings.
Redhill’s Brown took a hat-trick in the second
innings, ending the match with 6 wickets for 23
runs, and Banstead could not do enough to save
the match, losing a “splendid” game by 70 runs.
At 11pm the following day, Britain’s ultimatum
to Germany expired and we were at war. At least
seven of the Banstead players went on to serve
overseas; four were killed, one was captured and
the other two were wounded. Twelve members of
the club lost their lives in the war and they are
commemorated on a roll of honour board that
hangs in the clubhouse.
Fred Davis played in that last peacetime
match, batting at 8 and making just 1 run. He
was Banstead born and bred, growing up in Park
Road before later living in Ferndale and Lyme
Regis Roads. As a boy, he sang in the choir at All
Saints and won a scholarship to Sutton County
School (now Sutton Grammar), getting his tuition
fees, books, train fare and lunch paid for.
He had left school before the war, aged 16,
hoping to become a teacher, but like many young
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men of his generation, his plans for the future had
to be put on hold. He was 20 years old when
war broke out and joined up at the end of August
1914, when patriotic fervour was at its peak
and the news from Belgium was bad, the British
Expeditionary Force having begun its long retreat
from Mons.
He joined the 15th County of London Battalion,
the Prince of Wales’ Own Civil Service Rifles.
The Civil Service Rifles were one of the London’s
many Territorial battalions and were born out of a
tradition of voluntary militias raised from the men
of financial and governmental institutions. The Civil
Service Rifles was a good “club” for networking in
peacetime, with the men drawn from the clerical
classes and the Battalion officered by senior Civil
Servants and City men. Uniforms were usually
worn at the least excuse, Civil Service bigwigs
received private coaching in advance so as to not
embarrass themselves in the drill hall and private
soldiers, indignant at not being able to wear
swords like the officers, eventually won the right
to wear them – although only while off-duty.
When war was declared, one battalion became
three as their ranks swelled with volunteers. The
existing soldiers of the 15th became the 1/15th
and Fred was allotted to newly-formed 2/15th.
They were based locally during the first weeks of
1915, billeted in Dorking to train, tramping up and
down Leith Hill to improve their fitness, patrolling
the countryside and digging entrenchments at
Reigate. Fred was probably one of those who
got up at 4a.m. and marched the 10 miles without
breakfast to Epsom Downs for the review of
20,000 troops of the 2/2nd London Division by
Lord Kitchener, who was keen to show off his