I recently came across an interesting discussion concerning tracking down someone’s great-grandfather who appears in the photo above.
If you have any information on the above photo, believed to be of the Manchester Regiment, please drop us a comment (see below this post), we’d be really fascinated to hear from you!
Regarding the role of the military at Fleet Pond, FPS Chairman Colin Gray writes:
“Fleet Pond was incorporated into the army training lands acquired in 1854 when the Aldershot Garrison was built. It stayed with the army until 1972 by which time Fleet town had grown right up to the boundary of the pond. I suspect that it became unacceptable to have artillery training so close to residential areas, so Fleet Pond was made redundant and sold to Fleet UDC in January 1973 for £10,000. Hart Council inherited it in 1974 when FUDC was disbanded and Hart DC founded.”
We’ve managed to find a couple of related photos (see below) and Colin writes:
“The two photos are postcards that Percy Vickery has in his 900 strong collection of postcards of Fleet and Church Crookham. There was nothing on them to indicate who the regiment was but I know that the Royal Engineers spent a lot of time exercising at Fleet Pond over the years. They built the larger islands and at one time installed a steel bridge which spanned the pond from east to west. Sadly none of that remains today!”
Good read, and great photos there. Having a look into the past is fun, is it not?
Hello there all, the top photo cook house fleet pond is a photo from my family collection. It is actually a photo of my great great uncle not my great grandfather, John Morris. I have been trying to trace him for my mother (now 89) for 10 years and I am no further on. Unfortunately there were 100’s of men named John Morris born about the same time in Manchester and they all had parents called john and Mary Morris ( his sister was also called Mary). I still cannot locate army records for him, but he clearly appears in the photo above and was an army cook. The postcode photo of a regiment not posted by me seems to fit the time period and the uniform looks similar, to a novice like me anyway. The last time my mother saw him was when she was 5/6 around 1937 and she has wondered her whole life what happened to him. If anyone can give me any clues at all it might just be the piece that points me in the right direction.
Thank you for reading helen