The C. Power commemorated on the Civic Centre Memorial, Chelmsford is believed to have been the Charles Power who was recorded by 1911, aged 14, and a part-time scholar at The Essex Industrial School And Home For Destitute Boys in Rainsford Road, Chelmsford. His place of birth was unknown.
POWER, CHARLES,
2nd Lieutenant, 2nd Battalion, Prince of Wales’s Leinster Regiment (Royal Canadians)
(formerly of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment)
Charles was entitled to the 1914-15 Star, British War Medal, and Victory Medal.
Charles has no known grave and is commemorated on the Loos Memorial at Dud Corner Cemetery, France, some five kilometres north-west of Lens. He is also commemorated on the Civic Centre Memorial, Chelmsford, and on the War Memorial at the Church of Our Lady Immaculate in New London Road, Chelmsford (pictured).
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The C. Power commemorated on the Civic Centre Memorial, Chelmsford was commissioned on 19th June 1915 as a 2nd Lieutenant in the 2nd Battalion Prince of Wales’s Leinster Regiment (Royal Canadians). He had served as Company Quarter Master Sergeant 8516 attached to the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment. He went missing, presumed killed in action on 25th September 1915.
His medal card shows an address for correspondence as ‘Miss E Coller, 92 [New] London Road, Chelmsford’ (today’s number 161) – she was Ellen Mary Coller who was born there around 1850 and and died there in 1928. She was the head mistress of the Roman Catholic School in Chelmsford until her resignation which was reported in the local press in January 1915.
Her father was Duffield William. Coller, former editor of the Chelmsford Chronicle and Essex Weekly News, and was said to have built the first house in New London Road. Her sister Florence was an infants’ teacher, also at the Roman Catholic School.
