summer of 1914 David said goodbye to the 22-year-old
zeitgeist before he was to board a train at Sudbury railway
station on his way to London for an onward passage to
Guernsey and finally France. For his part, Bernard placed
a lily of the valley in David’s coat to remember him by. It
was a sad day at Foxearth.

The village’s first mass industry, outside farming, had
offered not just Foxearth but the whole of Essex a
remarkable experiment in pluck and enterprise. Tuesday, 4
August 1914 brought that joined world of content to an
abrupt halt and the stability of village life was to receive its
quietus on the bloody fields of the Great War.

 Like so many young men of his age, Bernard must have
felt a united purpose in a war against tyranny and was
buoyed by the euphoric jingoism. The broad consensus and
balance of belief about the rightness of the war was not
fundamentally eroded over the next four terrible years.

Four days later on August 8, the first of a series of
regulations which were to cripple some breweries, called
the Defence of the Realm Acts (DORA), were introduced.

When hostilities were declared, he first enlisted in the
Army Service Corps as an acting sergeant in the Field
Ambulance Corps before being commissioned into the 9th
North Staffordshire Regiment (Service) (Pioneer) which
had been formed at Lichfield on 20 September 1914; after a
period of leave, he was taught to fly at the London and
Provincial Private Flying School of Aviation and secured
his ticket of efficiency in a swift nine days which tested his
responsiveness to adjustment. Bernard made a couple of
trips back to the local area in his aircraft before he was
ready for active service.  A report dated from the Essex
Free Press on December 1st 1915 tells how a week earlier
he landed his 45hp, French-made Caudron aeroplane at
Lyston Park.

Part of the Act gave local courts the capacity to regulate
the opening of licensed premises in areas that were
considered ‘sensitive’ such as those near army barracks. By
October licensed premises all over the country had to close
by 10pm at the latest. The problem for brewers was
worsened when duty on beer rose from 7s 9d to £1 3s a
barrel; the following April this was raised to £1 5s. And the
swingeing measure did not stop there; by April 1918 the
un-stoppable upward momentum had reached £2 10s a
standard barrel. A shortage of raw material also had the
brewery producing a beer called Special, a malt-less brew,
strong enough one would think to banish any gloom.

The majority of raw materials were in such short supply
that anything and everything that would make a good
ferment was called into use for the making of mashes.31

The  visit  of  Mr.  Bernard  Ward  of  Foxearth  who  flew  from
Farnborough on Friday afternoon, created considerable inter-
est in Essex as well as in Foxearth, Sudbury, Melford, Lyston

and adjacent villages. Mr. Ward setting an example to many,
who are  claiming to  be “indispensable”,  joined the  army in
the  early  stages  of  the  war  and  is  now  an  efficient  “Man-

As well as having to cope with his many periodical
business  worries,  David  fought  against  a  prolonged
domestic  distraction  when  his  eldest  son  Bernard
announced he was volunteering to fight. In the early

bird”.
Aeroplanes have been from time to time passing in the vicinity

of the town, but none have flown over the town as this one did.
The throb of the engine was distinct as that of a motorcycle a

The basis sometimes included boiled potatoes, potato
peelings; anything and everything that would give a good ferment
and convert into sugar and then alcohol was called into use.

street  or  so  away.  He  flew  low  to  salute  the  inhabitants  of
Sudbury no doubt, and they were out in crowds, for they knew