A Military Wedding at Bedford

Church of St. Peter de  Merton with St. Cuthbert, Bedford (Wikimedia)

Thursday 18th November 1915:  A military wedding has taken place at St. Peter’s Church, Bedford this morning between Lena, daughter of Major and Mrs Winton Seton of 15 Cornwall Road, Bedford and Captain Henry Nicholls Beaumont-Walker, O.B.M., of the Army Service Corps, the son of Mr and Mrs R Beaumont-Walker of Nagpur, Bengal.  Captain Beaumont-Walker is an old boy of Bedford Modern school, where he played in both the 1st cricket eleven and the 1st Rugby team. He was gazetted to the Duke of Wellington’s Regiment on 24th December 1909 and transferred to the Army Service Corps in October 1914. He was granted eight days’ leave for his wedding after being at the Front since the beginning of the war, where he took part in the battles of Mons, the Marne, Aisne and Ypres. His brother Captain Robert K Beaumont-Walker[1] is serving with the 24th Regiment, the South Wales Borderers, and has just returned from Tsingtao in China, where the British and Japenese armies jointly destroyed the German naval base.[1]

The bride was attended by her older sister Iernie and her younger sister Brenda as bridesmaids, and the best man was Captain Robert Walker. The new Mrs Beaumont-Walker wore a mole coloured coat and skirt with a matching hat and carried a sheaf of Madonna lilies. The bridesmaids wore dark blue and each carried bouquets of red tulips and lilies of the valley. The reception was held at Cornwall Road.

Source: Bedfordshire Standard 19th February 1915

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[1] The siege of Tsingtao was the first Anglo-Japanese operation of the war and took place between 31st October and 7th November 1914.

[2] Both Beaumont-Walker brothers survived the war. Robert (b.1887) reached the rank of Major and died in Hampstead in 1972; Henry (b.1888) died in Surrey in 1978.