Catherine Mary (“Kit”) Lynham (briefly Catherine Mary Marshall and later Catherine Mary Barclay)

21 December 1888 to 1965

LYN00002

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1888

Catherine Lynam was the daughter of Charles Cotterill Lynam (LYN00001) and Catherine Alice (nee Hall) Lynam (HAL00100) was on 21 December 1888, the birth registered in early 1889 (GRO Volume 3A page 791) and baptised on 20 January 1889 at St Philip and St James, Oxford (St Philip and St James, Oxford Parish Records).

1891

1891 Census – Kynsal Lodge, Kynsal Heath, Cheshire

James Hall, 53, timber merchant

Mary Hall, 52

Marianne Hall, 21

Robert Hugh Hall, 20, timber merchant

Catherine Lynham (25)

Charles Garner Lynham (3)

Catherine Mary Lynham (2)

A cook and housemaid

1896

[The] move (of the Oxford Preparatory School, later the Dragon School) into new premises in 1895 coincided with the Royal Commission on Secondary Education recommending co-education in day schools. Ski[pper took note and floated the idea of including girls in the lower forms. No doubt he was partly influenced by the fact that his own daughter Kit was approaching school age.

Kit duly entered the school in September 1896, to be joined in 1901 by Deta Sergent, following in the footsteps of her brothers Victor, Dick and Noel. A steady trickle of girls joined the school in the years that followed, but not more than one new girl a term, by all accounts. They were usually daughters of members of staff or sisters of current Dragons.

Kit, according to one of her fellow Dragons, was once ‘sent in’ to Skipper. When a master felt that a pupil’s work or behaviour merited it, he would send the offender to the headmaster, where a ‘whacking’ would be the almost inevitabvle outcome. In this case, whether before of after such an event took place is not clear, Kit apparently ‘got hold of the cane and chased Skipper out’

(Devitt, Desmond, The Skipper’s War: Dragon School, Oxford and the Great War, page 41).

1901

1901 Census – The School House, 30 Bardwell Road, Oxford

Charles Cotterill Lynam 42, schoolmaster

Catherine A Lynam, 35

Charles G Lynam, 13

Catherine M Lynam, 12

Alfred Lynam, brother

Mabel Lynam, sister in law

1908

Kit Lynam was a bridesmaid at the wedding of Deta Sergent and Pug Wallace in the south of France (Devitt, Desmond, The Skipper’s War: Dragon School, Oxford and the Great War, page 42).

1911

1911 Census – United Gils School Settlement, 17 and 19 Peckam Street, Camberwell

Catherine Mary Lynam, 22 was a settlement worker, private means, born in Oxford

1914

In July 1914, Kit, then 26, was a member of the crew of The Blue Dragon II, which had wintered in Norway, with her father, Skipper Lynam. Her friend Gwen Brooks, a member of Skipper’s staff, Leslie Eastwood and two boys who were leaving the Oxford Preparatory School, were also on the crew. Yet the world was rushing into war, and the events were recorded in the ship’s logs. (Devitt, Desmond, The Skipper’s War: Dragon School, Oxford and the Great War, page 63).

1915

Catherine Mary Lynam married Francis Thomas Arthur James Marshall in Oxford, on 27 February 1915 (St Michael, Oxford Parish Records). Marshall-Lynam. February 27, at St Michael’s Church, Oxford, by the Rev T T Blockley (vicar of Old Basing), assisted by the Rev W Mansell Merry (vicar), Francis James Marshall, Temporary Second Lieutenant at the Royal Military Academy, youngest son of Mr and Mrs Marshall, of Stoke on Trent, to Catherine Mary, only daughter of Mr and Mrs CC Lynam, of Oxford (Oxfordshire Weekly News, 10 March 1915).

Among all the depressing war news, there was at least one cause for celebration. Kit Lynam, Skipper’s daughter, now aged 27, decided to get married. After leaving the OPS at the age of 14, she had spent five years at St Leonards Scool at St Andrews in Scotland (said to be the inspiration for Enid Blyton’s Malory Towers). Kit excelled in sport and had played hockey for Oxfordshire and Staffordshire. The marriage took place early in 1915. “On February 27^th we had a whole holiday in honour of Kit’s wedding. All who know him agree that Lieutenant Marshall, the bridegroom, has only one fault, and that is that he is not an Old Dragon. A wedding under the auspices of about a hundred schoolboys, mostly armed with confetti and old shoes, is an ordeal severe enough in all conscience. But the bridge and bridegroom took it all smilingly. (Devitt, Desmond, The Skipper’s War: Dragon School, Oxford and the Great War, page 97).

Tragedy followed three months later. Deaths. On the 12^th inst, at Haslar Hospital, of cerebro-spinal meningitis, Francis Thomas Arthur James Marshall, aged 28, Temporary Second Lieutenant RMA, husband of Catherine Mary Marshall and youngest son of James C Marshall of Stoke on Trent (Morning Advertiser, 14 May 1915).

Skipper’s own family were also engaged in the war. One of the first casualties in the family was the new husband of his daughter Kit; their marriage turned out to be painfully short, lasting barely a year. Lieutenant Marshall contracted meningitis and died in hospital in Portsmouth on 12 May 1915 without ever seeing action. Notwithstanding this tragedy, within five months Kit Marshall was in France, ‘driving a car and working in connection with the St Leonards School YMCA hut, Camp 18, Harfleur Valley, near Le Havre. From here she described a royal visit, among other experiences, for the Draconian of December 1915. “29 October 1915. The King visited the camp today, and he looked ill and worn. Only a few of the soldiers saw him, as they had been on fatigue the day before in a downpour of rain, and of course were soaked to the skin. They have no change of clothes and consequently could not appear properly dressed, so had to stay in their tents till he had gone.” However it was not George V who made the greatest impression on Kit but the ordinary soldiers. Many of them asked her to help write their letters or advise on tales of domestic woe. “One man came and told us a most pathetic story yesterday. He had been home on leave and when he got to his house, he found it was shut up and his wife and ten months old daughter had gone off with a Belgian refugee.” The character who surprised her most was a strongly built northern miner. He was able to quote Shelley and Keats to her and wanted her to teach him Latin (‘I have got a Latin grammar in my tent,’ he told her). Curious, Kit enquired how he had come to be so educated. She learnt that he had been an autodidact, living in lodgings on his own; he claimed he had ‘never met a woman who liked poetry’. Having recently had 23 teeth removed, he could not return to line until a new set of false teeth arrived. This gave Kit the chance to get to know him even better. She was amazed by his superior knowledge. “He floors me completely in all save Swinburne and Kipling, which two he does not know. But what surprises me is that things we have been educated up tpo such as Milton’s sonnets, Dante, Spenser and the like, he has discovered and read for his own enjoyment.” He later wrote to Kit telling her he had been sent back to Blighty with a head wound, adding that he had just discovered Oscar Wilde and was ‘devouring his plays’. Enclosed was a copy of Ibsen’s ‘The Warriors at Helgeland’. (Devitt, Desmond, The Skipper’s War: Dragon School, Oxford and the Great War, page 147 to 148).

1917

By this stage of the war, worrying about family members and friends engaged in conflict had become a way of life. As well as his daughter Kit (Marshall) and his son Garner, a Lieutenant in the Royal Navy Reserve, the Skipper had a number of other close relatives in uniform. (Devitt, Desmond, The Skipper’s War: Dragon School, Oxford and the Great War, page 245).

1919

I may also say here that my daughter, Kit Lynam/Marshall, has come back from her war work in France and Italy after nearly 4 years and that she is to marry Captain Cyril Barclay (Durham Light Infantry) and that they are to come to Oxford, and that we hope he will eventually join the Staff (Her father, Skipper Lynam’s diary, 19 July 1919).

1920

Catherine M Marshall married Cyril Lancelot Thomas Barclay (14 April 1896 to 1970) in the first quarter of 1920 at Chester le Street, County Durham (GRO Volume 10A page 1080).

1921

1921 Census – 59 Windermere Street, Gateshead, County Durham

Cyril Lancelot Barclay, 25, clerk in Holy Orders

Catherine Mary Barclay, 32

John Lynam Barclay, 0

1939

1939 Register – Holy Trinity Vicarage, Haslar Road, Gosport

Cyril L T Barclay, born 14 April 1896, clerk in Holy Orders, Holy Trinity Church

Catherine M Barclay, born 21 December 1888

John L Barclay, born 21 March 1921, single, Private in the Royal Army Ordnance Corps (5885035)

1965

Catherine M Barclay died in Gosport, aged 76, in the third quarter of 1965 (GRO Volume 6B page 303).

1970

Cyril Lancelot Thomas Barclay died in Gosport, Hampshire (GRO Volume 6B page 928).