Banstead Village

UPDATED 22 Dec 2023.

We have now traced various addresses the Bucklands lived at:

1936 to 1939 – 71 Holland Road South Kensington

1940 to 1944 – No records due to WWII

1945 to 1946 – unknown at present

1947 to 1949 – 4 Chatham Close Sutton (per 1948, 1949 and 1950 Electoral Rolls – 1951 E R shows new people at 4 Chatham Road

1950 to 1955 – unknown at present

1956 to 1964 – The Lodge, Mostyn Road, John Innes Park, Merton (now called Merton Park) (Source: 1964 ER and John Innes Society)

1965 to 1969 – 1 Cuddington Close Tadworth from 1966 ER to death cert)


NOTE: In the above list I have assumed that the Electoral Roll was published in the year following the data collection.


Kätchen, known as Kate, was involved with ballet.

Cuddington Close is part of the Preston Hawe Estate, which was built largely by Mitcham Borough Council and Merton & Morden UDC in the immediate post-war period. As the Bucklands previously lived in Merton, one can assume that they were relocated to Preston Hawe by their local council.

J W Buckland does not appear in the PGA card index (although I'm fairly sure a comprehensive search wasn't undertaken of the other records and I'm told there was no obligation for him to register with the PGA), and the only entry for him in Jackson's Register of Golf Professionals records him at Cologne GC (but the name is incorrectly shown as Brickland) and nothing later than 1928, but the Register only has records up to 1939. There doesn't seem to be any record of him taking part in the German Professional Golf Championships between 1927 and 1932, very unusual for a British golf professional residing in Germany at that time. Golfers Handbooks do not show him as pro at Banstead or Cuddington in the relevant period.

Thank you all so much for assisting us with this enquiry. Further details can be found here

Hello Marie, nice to meet you again in this way! Below are the dates of his career as a golf professional in Germany after the 1st World War - from which it can be seen that he participated in the golf instructor championships. I discovered this reference in the German Golf Archive in a journal "Golf" from 1928. Christoph Meister was able to confirm this entry.

10.05.1922 demobilization from the army; Registered address: c/o Kölner Golfclub

30.09.1928: Participation in the German Golf Instructor Championships in Cologne
Source: Journal "Golf" from 30.09.1928

1925 - 1930: Professional at the "Cologne Golf
Club", today: Cologne Golf and Country Club
Source: Yearbooks of the DGV

1930 - 1933: Move as a professional to the "GC Bergisch Land" in Wuppertal

1934 - 1935: Professional at the "Dresdner GC Bad Weisser Hirsch"
Source: Yearbook of the DGV from 1935
Holder of the course record with 68 strokes
Source: Golfer’s Handbook 1936

Hello again, Andreas. As you know, we have him running a golf school in London in 1940 but I still have had no luck tracing him after that. I'm fairly sure he wasn't at Banstead or Cuddington in the late 1940s or 1950s (according to Jackson and old Golfers Handbooks), but the Handbooks weren't updated properly because of the War and they don't record him at Worcestershire GC or Shrewsbury GC either.
We will find him one day!

Hello everyone, hello Marie, I had already written to all the well-known golf clubs in Surrey and unfortunately received very little feedback. In addition, the PGA South and the Surrey Golf Association, unfortunately no feedback here either. My wife will go to the national archives next week and see if there is any information there. I will post new findings as soon as possible.

Hi Andreas I found a newspaper article showing a J W Buckland representing a golf club at a funeral.

No idea if he was a member or maybe the pro, so I emailed the club yesterday. The Club manager has replied this morning to say that he has passed the enquiry on to a Director who knows most about the club's history. It's a very long shot, but worth a try - Daumen drücken.

Good evening Marie, that's good news for now. May I ask which golf club it was? And what date ? - this information may add to our puzzle in a new direction. Andreas

It would also be nice if you could send Lewis and me the article by email. If it were him, we would have the first photo documentation!

Will send it on to you both. There is no indication that he is the pro, but I thought we had nothing to lose by checking! The golf club is Disley GC in 1943 - a long way from where Buckland lived and worked most of the time, but during wartime, he might have had to move further north to continue to work outside the London area??

After much searching we have a report from January 1936:

FROM KHAKI TO PLUS FOURS
Golfer's 16 years in Germany

An English Golf professional who changed from khaki to plus fours while with the army of occupation on the Rhine, and has spent sixteen years in Germany, has returned home – and cannot go back.

J.Buckland who was an assistant to Jack White, former Open champion, at Sunningdale before the war, has already several German pupils at a golf school which he has already started in London. He told a reporter yesterday that Germany is now relying on native talent for the development of golf in that country.

"There are only eight British professionals left in Germany" he said, "and no more will be allowed to go there permanently. All the young German professionals, having undergone a course, have been given diplomas by the German government as fully qualified men.

"There are many fine courses in Germany, but the distances between them are great. In Saxony, for instance, there are only two clubs in addition to that at Dresden, which I left two months ago.

"I was in the Royal Artillery on the Rhine after the war, and while still in uniform acted as professional to the officer's golf club. I was demobilised there and became professional to Cologne Golf Club, afterwards going to Dresden."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

We still don't really know what James Walter Buckland did after that so if you have any information do please let us know.
As a result of this article we have contacted the Royal Artillery Golfing Society in the hope they might have something in their archives.

I've contacted Repton Pilgrims cricket team who had a player called J W Buckland in the relevant period. There are newspaper reports of him playing in games in Surrey, so there's a VERY slight possibility he could be our man.

I have added a request on RootsChat today.

Also, James' mother died in 1950 (the year we lose track of him) but to date I have not been able to find an address for her although it should be somewhere in Surrey. I will not order a death cert just yet.

Hi Andreas

The contents of this page are, as we say in Scotland, ‘cauld kale het agin’ (kaltes Kraut wieder aufgewärmt) and what I sent you several years ago.

At the same time, I tracked down two great nephews of Buckland. The one I contacted said his mother had spoken about the professional golfer in the family and he would speak to her about it. After he emailed me, he seems to have left his job in Guildford so I do not have a current contact but he had a brother in Bristol for whom I believe I also gave you an email address. I would not put their emails on a public forum because it is a breach of privacy and, in any event, I do not currently have access to the email I sent you.

If you contact one of the brothers I’m sure they can ask their mum. If you do not have the email, let me know and I will retrieve it from server backups over Christmas.

Best Wishes
Douglas

Note from LNW: Thanks Douglas. Andreas had told me that someone in the UK had looked at the family tree and identified a couple of individuals so I have not gone down that route at all.

New information in today from an Ancestry tree holder. "Grandfather George Buckland was a golf pro Sunningdale gold club and at Aldborough Norfolk. However he emigrated to Australia in the 50’s under the £10 assisted passage scheme and later died in Australia. M.O."
George Henry Buckland was James' older brother.

Many thanks to Wendy from Australia who I contacted via Ancestry. She has sent me a detailed family tree along with names of relatives we might contact.

Also, we now have concrete evidence of a link between the Buckland family and Jack White at Sunningdale golf club and an address, previously unknown, for James in Germany.

What is the concrete evidence of J W Buckland's link with Jack White? He claimed to have been an assistant in a newspaper interview but, although his address was Sunningdale, at the time of attestment for WWI, his occupation was given as groom.

Note from LNW : I don't have evidence of JWB's link To Jack White.

Thanks to Alison from The John Innes Society who has confirmed that James and his wife were at The Lodge in Merton Park for several years.
The electoral returns from 1957 to 1962 show both James and Kate were listed at The Lodge, plus an Elizabeth Sheldon, except for 1960 - 61 when Alison was unable to find any entry for the property. Whether the enumerator missed it because the park was shut, or it was empty for that year is not known.
Between 1962 and 1965 only James and Kate are listed. After that there is no entry at all.

The timeline listed above has been updated with the new dates.

We now have information from a formal document dated 1971 stating that James Walter Buckland was a "Local Government Officer (retired)".

This is at odds with his death certificate which shows his occupation as a retired golf professional. Of course both could be true.

The search goes on.

I've again passed to Andreas contact details of the two great=great nephews of Buckland I identified. The one I had previously been in touch with is still in Guildford and I have retrieved his new work contact details.

For those interested in J W's golfing brother George Henry, see: Antique Golf Scotland site

(www.antiquegolfscotland.com/antiquegolf/maker.php3?makerid=2161)

I have expanded the entry on J W Buckland in the Makers' section of the Antique Golf Clubs from Scotland site www.antiquegolfscotland.com/antiquegolf/maker.php3?makerid=1393
largely with more information on his time at the three German clubs where he was professional.

There is also some more added about his wife and cautious speculation on the real reason for his move back to England.

Update: March 2024. The search for a good photograph of James Walter Buckland has been quite extensive involving seven countries and over 400 emails however I can now report that an excellent photograph has been acquired from a collection of Buckland family photographs found in North Carolina.

I have compiled a full dossier on both James and his wife and this is now with Andreas Biste the originator of the enquiry. Once Andreas has updated his website with the story, I will add more information here.

Andreas is the founder of the Hickory Society Cologne and has been researching James Buckland for many years. He set many people/organisations the challenge of finding a photograph of James, then he found Banstead History. It took two and a half months, following every possible lead, eventually finding a great granddaughter of one of James' siblings in the USA. Her mother was able to provide the photograph we had all been after.

Dear Lewis, this is a world-class achievement of you and the whole team. I hope to see you in April. The HSC owes you a huge thank you! Andreas

Lewis you excelled yourself with this one. Good for you and good for Banstead History. If anyone could find a photograph of James Buckland it would be you.

True to his word, Andreas and his wife, Heidi, visited Banstead on 11 April and I was able to take them to James and Kate Buckland's final resting place in a beautiful rural setting in Surrey.

After his many years of research, which included searching local graveyards in Banstead and the surrounding villages, it was a pleasure to help Andreas achieve his ambition.

He intends to compile James' story from the copious amount of material he now has available, update the the Hickory Cologne Society website and formally present James' photograph and story to various dignitaries and golf clubs in Germany.

What a grand but simple finale.

My grandfather was George Buckland who was assistant pro at Sunningdale, my father Anthony Buckland is still alive and playing golf twice a week even now aged 96 at Buckingham golf club where he has been a member since the early 1970s.

Dear Mr Dave Buckland,
Your message of 15 December marks another milestone in our research and in the passion of your grandfather and great-uncle.
Unfortunately, I have been ill for some time and have not yet been able to process the many findings about James Walter, his wife Kate and, finally, the photo that was found, and publish them in consultation with Lewis. I will use the next few weeks and months to summarise and prepare the wealth of information.

The years 1936 to 1969 – i.e. JW's return to England until his death – have only been partially researched so far, especially his work as a golf professional. Perhaps your father can still provide us with information about both of them? - I would like to meet you and your father in person, as I was able to acquire a "Brassie" from your grandfather during my research.
The club is engraved with his name and the golf club. It would be an honour to give you this bat as a gift. Perhaps you could send me your email address at: andreas.biste@hickory-society.com. A prompt trip to England to get acquainted would not be a problem. I look forward to hearing from you.

Andreas Biste

Hi, I spoke to my father about his father George and his brother but he knows nothing of his uncle but knows about his father obviously. I would think he would give any information on him. Cheers Dave Buckland .

Please add your comments about this picture using the form below.

Comments


Your Name


Your email address - this will be shown on the page and will allow the system to notify you of further comments added to this picture.