feature – P.C. Linton Basil Stockbridge

picture is OK, your aerial should work fine with Freeview. If you do need a new aerial, contact the Registered Digital Installers Licensing Body on 01353 644040 or visit www.rdi-lb.tv for a list of registered installers. Option 2: buy a new Freeview recorder with twin tuners. This will receive digital television, acting as a digital box, and is also a recorder, allowing you to watch one channel while recording another. After the switchover, if you don’t have a digital recorder, you will only be able to record the channel you are watching. Option 3: buy a new television that has a built in digital tuner.

Where can I go for advice?

You can contact Digital UK on 08456 50 50 50 for advice or visit their website www.digitaluk.co.uk. If you have a hearing or speech impediment, contact the text phone service on 0845 2340380.

What is the Help Scheme?

A Help Scheme is available if you are 75 or over, have lived in a care home for over six months, get certain disability benefits or are registered blind or partially sighted. If you are eligible you should have received a letter from the Scheme, but if you are in any doubt, contact the scheme on 0800 4085900 or visit www.helpscheme.co.uk.

Melbourn Health Visiting Team

Drop in clinics for parents and babies are held as follows: Melbourn clinic every Wednesday between 9.30 and 11.30am at: 35 Orchard Road, Melbourn. Telephone 01763 262861

In March TV in Melbourn (Anglia) is going digital. See page 17 for more information. feature

P.C. Linton Basil Stockbridge

Basil was born in Melbourn on 22nd January 1914 – he was the 3rd of the five children born to Joseph and Ellen Stockbridge. He was a fine all-round sportsman, being an outstanding footballer and cricketer, as well as a fine athlete. He was a choirboy and a server at All Saints and extremely popular amongst his peers.

When he left school he was apprenticed to a coachbuilder in Royston, but in September 1938 he decided to join the Somerset Police Force and was stationed at Weston Super Mare. He was considered a sincere and dedicated officer who was expected to go far in the police force. On the night of 4th September 1940 Basil was in the village of Banwell – he should not have been working that night but had volunteered for duty to allow a married colleague to have an evening off. He was with Special Constable Ronald Clark whose 49th birthday it was. Ron had opened his presents and then gone on duty, telling his family that he and Basil would be back later for some sandwiches. By a cruel twist of fate, he also should not have been working that night – he had swapped duties with another officer! They were on observation duty keeping watch on the house of a suspected arsonist who had been setting fire to hayricks.

At 9.20 the sirens sounded and the villagers took precautions against the possibility of a German air-raid attack. If a family did not have an Anderson or Morrison shelter, it was common practice to move a mattress under the stairs or near a chimney as these were considered the safest place to be. However the ‘phoney’ war during which the sirens regularly went off but nothing actually happened meant that most inhabitants of the village were not really expecting any problems. However, about an hour later the bombers were heard approaching and eight or nine bombs were dropped in the village, the telephone exchange was hit, a gas main was on fire and several houses had received direct hits. A number of people lost their lives that night.

Access to the village was now difficult as the roads were damaged so ambulances had to drive across the fields to pick up the wounded, the place was in chaos. Another Police Officer, Gerald Lockyer, had seen Basil alongside Ron Clarke just before one of the bombs had exploded – Ron’s body was found but there was no sign of Basil. It was not until the following day when he had failed to report back to his station that a search party was organised and it appeared he had been blown right over a house and was lying some distance away. His body was brought back to Melbourn where he was buried on 9th September. The church was packed with mourners including his fiancée, a hospital nurse called Miss Lee. The Police Force was represented by a Police Inspector from Somerset and four of his colleagues and a sergeant and two constables from the Cambridge County Police Force.It was decided to give his widowed mother Ellen a gratuity of £16.10.8d – the highest amount payable for his length of service!

This story was given to me by Joy Galley, who is the daughter of Basil’s elder brother Maurice. It has been included in a book about Banwell’s victims of two world wars which was produced by the Banwell Society of Archaeology. As Basil was not a Banwell resident, his name does not appear on any village memorials but the tribute to this brave young man is now on record in the archives of their village. Mavis Howard