Alfred Page King

Corporal - Service No. G/20324 - Royal Sussex Regiment

Alfred Page King, the son of Thomas Alfred King and his wife Annie (Page), was born on 26th November 1895 in Mulbarton, Norfolk. He was the eldest of Thomas and Annie's five children, Annie (1898), Marjorie (1900), Christine (1903) and Arthur (1905). Thomas Alfred Page was a butcher who had lived at Hospital Farm, overlooking Swardeston High Common, with his widowed mother Jane, his father having died in 1865. Jane carried on farming after her husband, Robert, had died with the aid of some of her children and some hired labour. In 1894 Thomas Alfred King married Annie Page, originally from Shelfanger but latterly living at Intwood looking after her widowed father, William Page, a farm steward. Thomas and Annie initially lived in Mulkbarton, probably at the top of Wood Lane, but soon relocated to Swardeston where they lived at the bottom of High Common in what is now Hillside and Fairview but was in those days just a single, and much bigger, dwelling. Here Thomas, although he was always referred to as Alfred, carried on his butchery business.

Alfred Page King was raised and educated in Swardeston and, when he left school, he went to work as a butcher with his father who, by this time was over 60 years old. The same applied to his younger brother Arthur when he duly left school some ten years later. About 1916 Alfred King joined the Royal Sussex Regiment, serving with both the 7th and 8th Battalions, but his army records do not survive and little information is available with regards to his army service. We do know that he was awarded the British War Medal and the Victory Medal but little else is known.

On 25th February 1925 Alfred Page King married Gladys Annie May Chapman, from Bracon Ash, at Swardeston but the marriage was not a happy one and the couple eventually split up. Thomas Alfred King died in 1932 at the age of 82 and his widow, Annie, continued living in the village at The Croft, overlooking High Common, until her death in 1948 at the age of 85.

By the time of the Second World War, Alfred had moved on and was in a lasting relationship with Blanche Annie Brighten, some eleven years his junior, from Wreningham. The couple had a daughter, Marion, born in Norwich in 1942. Alfred had a shop built (now Leeders Pet Supplies) by the turnpike in Swardeston from which to carry on his butchery business aided by his brother Arthur. Alfred Page King died in 1975, the business was sold off and eventually closed but it would appear, from the available records, that in 1972, just three years before he died, he finally married Blanche Brighten, although she had been known as Blanche King for the previous 30 years. Blanche King moved to Berkshire to be near her daughter, Marion, and here she passed away in 1984 aged 77.

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