Higham Ferrers First World War servicemen and prominent suffragette to be honoured with the naming of new roads in the town

Cllr Gary Salmon, deputy mayor of Higham Ferrers, is on the lookout for family members of the 11 Higham Ferrers-born First World War servicemen who gave their lives for their country as well as Alice Maud Shipley, a local imprisoned suffragette heroine.

The hope is to invite them to a ‘special exhibition’ in the run-up to Remembrance Day weekend where they will be immortalised with road names dedicated to them in the new development just off Spire Road, Rushden.

Cllr Salmon said: "We want the families to know that although it is 110 years since the start of the First World War, these servicemen have not been forgotten and neither has suffragette Alice Maud Shipley.

“We have some information about them, but we are hoping that any families we can trace are able to provide us with more details. We are also searching for photographs.

“The idea is to put together a history of each person; detail where they served, where they are buried and display it all at this special exhibition.

“In addition, we are planning to get street maps made and mark all the places where the servicemen and the suffragette lived.”

Higham Ferrers Town Council had previously been asked to come up with names for the new roads and before he became the deputy mayor, Cllr Salmon suggested that they be selected from the list of servicemen on the market town’s war memorial. Twenty names were selected and submitted to North Northants Council and Royal Mail for consideration.

The names will be for roads in the development being built by HarperCrewe that is currently going up between the back of the town’s Ferrers School and the nearby A6 bypass.

The main road in the new estate is Draper Road, which is being named after William Ernest Draper, who lived in Kimbolton Road. Other streets will be named after the likes of Sidney Gadsby (Gadsby Place), Reginald Litchfield and his brother Thomas Litchfield (Litchfield Drive), William Wagstaff (Wagstaff Court) and Shipley Close, being named after suffragette Alice Maud Shipley.

The full list of heroes to receive a street in their honour is as follows:

- William Ernest Draper

- Sidney Gadsby

- Reginald Litchfield

- Thomas Litchfield

- William Wagstaff

- Dennis Pashler

- Bertram Pashler

- Henry Dawes

- Bert Dawes

- William Baxter

- Hugh Caswell

- Alice Maud Shipley

Any families connected to those who are to be honoured are asked to contact the deputy mayor on [email protected] or historian Geoff Moore on [email protected].