From A History Of The Wiltshire Strattons, updated and edited by Richard Flower Stratton, 1987:
Charles Harris Stratton 1866-1945
Charlie was born in 1866, when his father moved to Kingston Deverill. His mother, Elizabeth Harris, was William’s first wife. She died in childbirth with her second son, Edmund, who himself died aged six months.
Charlie was left a large private income by his mother, went to Sherborne School and then on a world tour. He never showed any inclination for work. As a result his half-brothers were whipped out of school early before they developed similar inclinations; Harris money having reputedly paid their fees.
William’s sister Charlotte, who was his housekeeper before his first marriage and then again after his first widowhood, married “Little” Jimmy Parham, who farmed at Sutton Veny. They had one daughter, Dorothy, who had a governess, Lorna Buckingham. She, then eighteen, was one of four sisters, brilliant, beautiful and headstrong. Charlie offered wealth, stability and travel and it was on this basis that they married. He bought Hill Deverill Farm from the Duke of Somerset. Lorna was bored to distraction by this unexpected rural life. They moved to Clifton and then to London. They were completely unsuited to each other from the start and should never have married.
They soon separated, and Charlie came to live at Warminster with his step-mother, half-sister and Uncle Jack. He lived with Uncle Jack – like a couple of bachelors – for the rest of his life.
He became Chairman of Warminster Urban District Council 1924-1926, having been largely responsible for the conception and design of the Warminster Lake Pleasure Grounds [Town Park]. He received the Prince of Wales at the opening ceremony. A keen member of the Warminster Bowls Club, the new putting course gave him especial pleasure.
With a Major Johns, he founded the Warminster Timber Company, which, with British Legion support, set up an offshoot, the Warminster Chair Company (across the line from the goods station), to provide work for returning disabled ex-servicemen.
Charlie Stratton was an easy-going taciturn character. He had a phenomenal memory and could recite long lengths of poetry and prose on demand, such as The Hunting Of The Snark and Hiawatha. He chain-smoked and let the ash fall down his waistcoat. He listened to the wireless and gramophone (Tit-Willow).
He was one of the first ever car owners; he was once summoned for dangerous driving in Salisbury (he was an appalling driver) and never went to Salisbury again. He went to Warminster every Friday. Uncle Charlie drove me and the then pupil to the centenary Royal Show at Windsor in 1939. He had a 30 H.P. Ford V8. They were just making what was then the Basingstoke Bypass. The roundabouts were still mounds of loose earth. Uncle Charlie had never seen a roundabout before. To our consternation, without slackening speed, we ploughed straight over the roundabouts. Uncle Charlie looked neither to right or left, made no comment, and the cigarette ash continued to fall down his waistcoat.
He was very dark. He was once sitting on in the train at Paddington when a woman with a child started to enter his compartment; “I don’t think we’ll sit here,” said the mother, “There is an Indian in the compartment.”
He had one daughter, Rosita, beautiful and very dark. She married a New Zealander, John Chrystall, who had a distinguished career in the British Army. Charles was a much loved father and grandfather, providing the many delights of farm and country. We remember the beady sweat on his forehead after eating curry, his hammock in the garden with spaniel Dinah nearby, his love of chess and cribbage, and the endless search for his spectacles so often found on his head.
Lorna meanwhile had lived a lonely life and though she excelled in anythingh she did, painting, languages, dog breeding and so on, she was frustrated by the era in which she lived and was never able to achieve anything professionally. In 1940 with the bombs in London, her days were numbered with cancer. Uncle Charlie bought her a house in Corton in which to end her life in peace and quiet.
Uncle Charlie never got over Codford Farmhouse being burnt down. He sat pathetically in the garden as the Welsh Guards dragged everything out of the house in to the churchyard. “At least it will burn the spiders,” he said.
He died in April 1945.