Remembrance Day 2023

The Tallow Chandlers’ Company commemorated Remembrance Day with a small ceremony at the Company’s memorial plaque. Revd Canon Bill Christianson gave a beautiful reading, followed by a moving silence and laying of two wreaths. One wreath was laid by Past Master Ian McIntyre and the other by Piers Vacher, First Warden of the Salters’ Company, whose ancestors were members of the Tallow Chandlers’ Company, including George Herbert Vacher.

2nd Lieutenant George Herbert Vacher was killed in action on the 11th November 1914. He was the eldest son of Herbert Perkins and Elizabeth Gautherot Vacher, and was born in Winchester in February 1894. He was educated at Sherborne School and at Worcester College, Oxford, and was a keen athlete, excelling at running and boxing, and reaching the welterweight finals of the Oxford University trials in 1914.

George was a Tallow Chandlers’ Company Apprentice, bound to his uncle, Dr Francis Vacher, a member of the Court and Past Master. On Dr Vacher’s death in April 1914, George was turned over to Sir John Humphery, the uncle of Richard and Edward Humphery, who were both killed during the Second World War, and are also commemorated on the Company’s memorial plaque.

On the outbreak of the First World War, George applied for a commission through his College and was gazetted to his regiment in August 1914. On being attached to the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, he left for the front with the VIIth Division on the 5th October, and was killed on the Western Front just over a month later. He is remembered not only on the Tallow Chandlers’ Company Plaque, but also at the Ploegsteert Memorial, which commemorates those who died in the area with no known grave.