Cyril Goult and Ena Phyllis Goult nee Buckley
This headstone carries the emblem of the Palestine Police Force in which Cyril had been an Inspector. He is nicknamed on the stone as "Darkie".
Cyril Goult was the youngest child in a large family of six children, born in York to parents George Arthur and Mary Jane (Jeannie) nee Buckle. His father had served in the 10th Royal Hussars which is perhaps where Cyril got a taste for military service. By 1911 when Cyril was five (he was born on 17 June 1905) his father worked as a packer at a confectionery factory in York.
Cyril had become a police officer by 1935 when he married Ena Phyllis Buckley. They were married at the cathedral church of St George the Martyr in Jerusalem on 30 November 1935, his father being described as a clerk and hers as a cotton merchant. They were to return to the UK, arriving in Southampton on 16 December that year, but their home was undoubtedly Palestine.
Ena Phyllis had been born in Lancashire on 21 January 1906, her father Edmund being then a grey cloth salesman. He and his wife Matilda had two daughters, Ena having an older sibling, Margaret, four years her senior. Ena was registered as a nurse on 27 June 1930 at St Thomas' Hospital in London, and ten years later she remained on the register although she now lived in Palestine. She and Cyril had a daughter,
Helena Catherine, (
D 26.3) who was born in June 1937 in Jerusalem.
Palestine at this time comprised modern-day Israel and Jordan and whilst Cyril and Ena were there was termed the British Mandate. Cyril's work as a policeman would have been quasi-military as the conflict between Arabs and Jews escalated and the British found themselves in the middle. On 29 June 1939, a few weeks before the outbreak of the Second World War the couple returned to Palestine after a brief visit to the UK. Their daughter Joyce Margaret was born at the Police Married Quarters on 26 December 1940, and Cyril was named as an Inspector of Police.
As life became more dangerous Ena returned to the UK with her two daughters in 1947 and Cyril arrived home in June 1948 after the British withdrew from the region on 14 May following the partition of Palestine.
Cyril died in early 1975 and his wife Ena on 3 September 1985. At her death she was living in Princethorpe Way, Coventry.