234251 William Thomas Barlow Royal Air Force 108 Squadron from:Bury (d.8th Aug 1944) We have a cup in the Bury Table Tennis League league called the Barlow Cup.
The Barlow Cup is named after a man named William Barlow who died serving the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve 108 Squadron in 1944 in Alexandria, Egypt. I was able to find William Thomas's grave and as such learned he had a wife named Vera and he was the son of James & Florence Barlow.
The Barlow Cup was presented to the Bury league by Vernon Peatfield in 1947. The winner of the open singles championships gets presented this cup. Twice throughout the years it has gone missing but we have it back now. We are getting it restored and it will look great when we have done this.
Both Bill & Vernon were National standard table tennis players in the late 1930s and are featured in a few magazine articles from 1938 & 39 but I cannot find them in any other post war magazines.
Vernon & Bill were a formidable doubles team making many finals together.
In addition to being doubles partners they were frequently opponents. Bill won the open singles tournament in Bury in 1937/38 and in the 1938/39 season Vernon & Bill were opponents in the open singles final with Vernon being victorious.
This cup has an engraving on the front of it relating to how Bill passed serving for the RAF on the 8th of August 1944.
We have correspondence (the last) from Vernon from 1959 stating that even though he moved to Northampton he liked to keep in touch how the Bury League was performing.
Does anyone have any knowledge of anything relating to Bill Barlow or Vernon Peatfield within your memory banks or stores of information, Anything at all relating to Bill Barlow or Vernon Peatfield?
Vernon was A Vernon Peatfield. We believe the A stood for Arthur and he possibly married a lady called Marjorie Naylor although this may be incorrect. Bill was W.T Barlow.
Anyway, hoping you can help somehow, would love to hear from you.
|