Charles Harold Heathcote
- Born: 1876 at Sale Cheshire
- Baptism : 18 March 1876 at Sale
- Married (1) : 7 August 1901 Katharine Howard Holderness. youngest daughter of the Rev. William Holderness. She died 1907
- Married (II) : 1908 Ismay Eleanor Mary She died 1929 – one son
- Married (III) : Josephine
- Death: date unknown
The eldest son of Charles Henry Heathcote, architect, and his wife Mary Ann, Charles Harold Heathcote was born at Sale in 1876. Little is certain regarding his professional career. He is assumed to have been trained by his father joining him in partnership about 1900 and remaining with him until the outbreak of war in 1914. At the end of the war he appears to have worked briefly in the London office before commencing practice on his own account. He became a LRIBA in 1925.
He married (I) 7 August 1901 Katharine Howard Holderness, the youngest daughter of the Rev. William Holderness at Ulverston Parish Church. She died in May 1907 having fallen from a first-floor window at their home in Talbot Road, Old Trafford. She is buried in Brooklands Cemetery with two daughters who died in infancy. He next married (II) Ismay Eleanor Mary (unknown), She was born in Australia and is recorded in the 1911 census as living with an infant son, Charles Alexander at Chapel-en-le Frith. She died in 1929 at Stamford Hospital. Little is known of his third marriage to Josephine, who survived him.
On 24 March 1897 he became Second Lieutenant 2nd Volunteer Battalion the Sherwood Foresters (Derbyshire Regiment) as was his brother Ernest Grigg Heathcote on the same day.
In April 1916 Charles Harold Heathcote, now promoted to Major was sent to Dublin with the 2/7 Battalion of the Sherwoods to help quell the Easter Rising. The troops were just off the boat from a training depot in England, and so inexperienced that they had to be shown how to fire and reload their weapons on the pier at Kingstown. In addition, they had left behind their grenades and their Lewis machine gun had been lost in the crossing. On the afternoon of 26 April they faced a handful of rebels at Mount Street Bridge Though only lasting a number of hours, the battle accounted for approximately half of the total British military casualties of the Rising, and was a minor military disaster for the British. Exact casualty figures have remained elusive, British official figures state that 216 British officers and men were killed or wounded but unofficial figures indicate that the number could have approached 500.
As a "reward" for their gallantry, troops from the regiment were chosen to form the firing squads for the leaders of the Easter Rising who were to be executed in Kilmainham Gaol. Having been sent to Richmond Barracks to take charge of the prisoners and their effects and escort them to Kilmainham, Major Charles Harold Heathcote, second in command of the regiment, acted as the commander of the firing squad.
The date of his death is unknown.
Address
1913 Charles Harold Heathcote FMSA 37 Princess Street Manchester
1916 Major Charles Harold Heathcote Richmond Barracks Dublin
1919 Charles Harold Heathcote FMSA Lloyds Bank Building King Street Manchester and 36 Southampton Row London WC
Residence
1901 Wychwood, Buxton
1907 Talbot Road Old Trafford
1920 18 Clarendon Road London WC
1929 Wakerley House Wakerley near Stamford.
1933 Woodlands Whaley Bridge
1936 27 Bramhall Lane South Bramhall
Reference : Lancashire Evening Post Thursday 8 August 1901 page 4 – extensive report of wedding
Reference : Manchester Courier 30 May 1907 page 10 – inquest
Reference : British Architect 31 May 1907 Page 385
Reference : Grantham Journal 12 October 1929 page 9 – death of Ismay Eleanor Mary
