Tuesday 11th August 1914

Gilbert and Geraldine Tunstill left St Petersburg to return to England; the journey would take them 10 days.

 

Johnny Hoyle celebrated his twenty-first birthday. He was to volunteer in September 1914 and would become one of the Cowling men who were attached to ‘A’ Company, 10^th Battalion, Duke of Wellington’s (West Riding) Regiment and become ‘adopted’ members of “Tunstill’s Men”.

Much of the information on Johnny Hoyle and other of the Cowling volunteers derives from the knowledge, enthusiasm and generosity of Joan Tindale and other Cowling enthusiasts, to whom I am most grateful.

In many ways, Johnny Hoyle was a ‘typical’ Tunstill volunteer. In August 1914 he was living at 7 Gibb Street, Cowling, along with his father, John (b.1866), mother, Ellen (nee Leadbetter, b.1867) three brothers and one sister. Johnny had worked as both a warehouse hand and, latterly, as a weaver in the local cotton mills which employed so many men and women.