Son of Mr R. S. and Mrs M. A. Hipwood, of 6 Victoria St., Stourbridge, Worcestershire. Native of Sunderland.
Linda Gowans has submitted the following:-
Richard was born on May 29th 1895 in Michaelson Road, Barrow-in-Furness, the son of Richard Sheldon Hipwood, born Wednesbury, Staffordshire, Refreshment House Keeper, and his wife Mary Ann (née Blakemore), from Walsall Wood, Staffs. By 1901 his much-travelled family had moved to 9 Queensbury Street, Sunderland, where he is with his mother and sisters Mary (born 1885), Stocking Machinist Dressmaker, and Ethel Selina (born 1888), Check Girl in Office, both from Wednesbury. By 1911 Mary Ann, Richard and Ethel (now a Clerk at the Co-Operative Society) are at 19 Chatsworth Street, joined by father Richard Sheldon, now a Ship’s Plater. Richard junior attended Bede School.
At the time of their son’s death, his parents Richard and Mary (who had married in West Bromwich in 1884) were probably at 174 Cleveland Road. They had moved back to the Midlands by the time the CWGC notice was compiled, when his father requested the inscription ‘Faithful Unto Death’ on Richard’s headstone.
Richard enlisted at Sunderland at an unknown date and served with the 10th and then the 13th Bn. of the Welsh Regiment. He died of wounds in France on August 27th 1918 at 34th Casualty Clearing Station, then located at Fienvillers (Somme).
His Battalion was part of the 38th (Welsh) Division which took part in the Battle of Albert, August 21st-23rd 1918, so it seems very likely that the wounds he had sustained were a result of that action.
Contalmaison is about 6 kilometres north-east of Albert and south of the main road from Albert to Bapaume. The CWGC states that ‘The cemetery was begun by fighting units on the evening of the 14th July, 1916, and used from September, 1916 to March, 1917 by Field Ambulances [mobile medical units]. A few burials were made in Plot I, Rows B and C, in August and September, 1918.’ The burials would have included that of Richard William Hipwood.
Richard William Hipwood is remembered at Monkwearmouth on M46.20 and M46.22 and at Sunderland on S140.009, S140.010, S140.017 and S140.048 part 6
