Name
Thomas Tiplady
1 January 1882
Conflict
First World War
Date of Death / Age
Rank, Service Number & Service Details
Awards: Service Medals/Honour Awards
British War and Victory medals
Cemetery/Memorial: Name/Reference/Country
Headstone Inscription
Not Researched
UK & Other Memorials
Marlowes Methodist Church War Memorial, Hemel Hempstead, Not on the Hemel Hempstead Town Memorial
Pre War
Thomas Tiplady was born on 1 January 1882 in Gayle, Yorkshire, the son of Francis and Mary Tiplady and one of nine children. On the 1901 Census the family were living at 34 Leonard Street, Great Marsden, Lancashire. Thomas had left school by the aged of 13. His father died in 1896 and on the 1901 Census his widowed mother was living at 80 Brunswick Street, Little Marsden, Nelson, Lancs with Thomas and three of his siblings who were all working as Cotton Weavers.
He became a Methodist Minister in 1908 after having studied for three years at the Richmond Theological College, London. He served for five years in the East End of London and preached at Marlowes Methodist Church, Hemel Hempstead. He was also an author, poet and hymn writer. The Hemel Hempstead Gazette published many of his poems which were dedicated to the fallen.
On the 1939 Register he was a Methodist Minister living at Chester Way, Lambeth, London. He died in Lambeth in 1967.
Wartime Service
He volunteered as Chaplain to the British Expeditionary Force and went to France on 7 March 1916. He served with the Queen's Westminster Rifles in the Somme and Arras campaigns.
He caught Trench Fever in 1918 and was returned to England where he was laid up for some time, and when he recovered and returned to France, he was stationed at Abbeville until the end of the war.
Additional Information
Marlowes Methodist Church was one of the five churches that merged in 2006 to form Hemel Hempstead Methodist Church. The Marlowes Methodist Church building was built in 1890 and used regularly from then until 2006 and then again as the main Hemel Hempstead Methodist Church building from May 2012 until it finally closed in March 2014. The war memorial was removed from the building before demolition and passed to the local British Legion. The war memorial is unusual in that it names those who returned safely as well as those who died.
Acknowledgments
Brenda Palmer
www.hemelheroes.com., www.mymethodisthistory.org.uk
