Key Information
Name: Francis Richard Lowry Bell
DoB: August 27 1891
Regt: Border
DoD: February 22 1916
Academic Career: CGS 1904-9
Biographical Information
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Francis was born just six weeks before the death of his father after whom he was named. His mother, Elizabeth (nee Johnson) was 27 and also had a daughter Annie Mary, aged two.
Francis’s parents were Francis and Elizabeth (nee Johnston) Bell. They had married at Arthuret Church, Longtown in 1887 as Elizabeth’s family farmed in the area. Francis came from Hesket in the Forest where his family had farmed Inglewood House for three generations, Inglewood House is quite an impressive farmhouse, it is now grade two listed. Francis Senior’s younger brother had died three years earlier aged twenty-three, his father and all of his paternal uncles had also died. The executors of Francis’s will were Elizabeth’s brothers. Elizabeth left Inglewood and was living in Stanwix, Carlisle in 1901, and at Alstonby Villa, Westlinton in 1911, and Brampton in 1916. Elizabeth’s widowed mother Mary Johnston nee Hewitt also lived with them for some time. Elizabeth is described as living on “private means” in each census so presumably Francis Senior left her comfortably off.
On leaving school Francis joined the firm of J M Richardson & Son, then the Land Valuation Dept. of the Inland Revenue, and later Messers Frank and Rutley, of Edinburgh. In the probate register in 1916 his address is given as Burnfoot House, Wigton, where his mother lived.
