Box People and Places
Latest Issue 31 Spring 2021 
  • This Issue
    • Celebrity Visits
    • Middlehill Tunnel
    • Doris Pepita Chappell
    • Local Roman Finds
    • Gingell
    • Jut the Ticket
    • Straightening & Levelling
    • Tottle Family
    • Rudloe Part 2
    • Bowdler
    • Bullocks Worldwide
    • James Shell of KIngsdown
    • Bill Peter Recalled
    • Rudloe WW2 Remnants
    • More Stink Pipes
    • Northey Tankard Found
  • Early Medieval
    • Britain in Late Antiquity
    • Box after AD 350
    • Why Speak English?
    • Art and Craft
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    • Issue 30 - Georgian Rudloe
    • Issue 29 - Darkest Hour
    • Issue 28 - VE Day
    • Issue 27 - Northey
    • Issue 26 - Heritage Trail
    • Earlier Issues 1 - 25 >
      • Issue 25 - Slave Owners
      • Issue 24 - Highwaymen
      • Issue 23 - Georgian
      • Issue 22 - War Memorial
      • Issue 21 - Childhood 1949-59
      • Issue 20 - Box Home Guard
      • Issue 19 - Outbreak WW2
      • Issue 18 - Building Bargates
      • Issue 17 - Railway Changes
      • Issue 16 - Quarries
      • Issue 15 - Rail & Quarry
      • Issue 14 - Civil War
      • Issue 13: Box Revels
      • Issue 12 - Where You Live
      • Issue 11 - Tudor & Stuart
      • Issue 10 - End of Era 1912
      • Issue 9 - Health & Leisure
      • Issue 8 - Farming & Rural
      • Issue 7 - Manufacturing
      • Issue 6 - Celebrations
      • Issue 5 - Victorian Centre
      • Issue 4 - Slump after WW1
      • Issue 3 - Great War 1914-18
      • Issue 2 - 1950s & 1960s
      • Issue 1 - 1920s
    • Index By Author
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    • Northeys >
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Picture
Barry Burton's grave at Bromley Hill Cemetery courtesy JS via the Find a Grave website.[1]

Barry Burton, airman
Joanna Burton
November 2019

Joanna Burton is related of one of the airmen who lost their lives in an air crash on  27 February 1943. This is her tribute to her ancestor along with the other airmen, whose story is told at  Box Air Crash.
​

​Barry Charles Burton was my great-great uncle. He was born in Bromley, Kent, on 28 May 1922, the younger of two children born to Thomas Charles Burton, a blacksmith, and Alice Annie (nee Thomas). Both Thomas and Alice were from Brighton and had moved to 14 North Street, Bromley, around 1911.

Barry lived with his parents and older brother Stanley Thomas Frank at 14 North Street and by 1939 he was working as a clerk with a local firm of estate agents. My great grandfather Stanley had followed his father into blacksmithing and, at this time, lived at 11 Glebe Road with his new wife Julia, a five-minute walk away the family home.
Both brothers saw war service in World War II. Stanley served as a Fire Watcher, a civilian role attending to incendiary bombs that would have allowed him to continue working in the reserved occupation of blacksmithing, while Barry signed up for the Royal Airforce Volunteer Reserve. His service number indicates that he joined at either Uxbridge or Weston-super-Mare at some date after November 1940,

In 1940 Barry first joined the Local Defence Volunteers, which later became the Home Guard, before joining the Royal Air Force in the autumn of that year. Within two years he had attained the rank of Flight Sergeant, flying in Lancasters. His plane ditched in the North Sea sometime during the winter of 1942-43. Remarkably he got out the plane alive and was rescued. He was sent on leave before being transferred to the training squadron. One of my grandfather's earliest memories is playing aeroplanes with his uncle Barry during this time at home.

​Stanley was killed by enemy action on 31 January 1941 at the forge behind his childhood home, leaving behind a widow and newborn son. Barry died two years later and was buried in Block G, Grave 274 of Bromley Hill Cemetery, where a memorial plaque commemorating him, his brother and their mother now lies.
Reference
​[1] See https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/24366383
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