SPRATTON LOCAL HISTORY SOCIETY

John was born in Spratton on 23 November 1868, the son of James Wykes, a shoemaker from Spratton and his wife Mary Ann (née Boswell).  They lived in Bakers Lane, Spratton until the early 1890s and then moved to Northampton. John married Caroline Blunt on 16 July 1904 when he was 36 and by 1911 when he was 43 they were living at 45 Lawrence Street, Northampton. John worked as a brickyard labourer for Northampton Corporation.  They had three children: Ada Emma Caroline, Mary Elizabeth and John Charles Henry.

John had been a Reservist in the army and so enlisted as soon as war was declared and was sent overseas with the 1st Battalion, the Northamptonshire Regiment on 20 September 1914 aged 46. He was wounded in November 1914 when the regiment was engaged in heavy fighting and many men were killed. Two months later, during intense shelling of the trenches at Cuinchy, a village to the east of Béthune,  the regiment was ordered to support the King’s Royal Rifles in attacking an enemy post on a railway embankment. John was killed in action on 9 January 1915. He is commemorated in the Le Touret Memorial Cemetery, Pas-de-Calais, France.  John was awarded the 1914 Star and Clasp, the British War Medal and the Victory Medal.