George Henry Thorley and Frances Lizzie Thorley nee Wigley
There are many members of the Thorley family commemorated at Stoneleigh.
George Henry Thorley was the brother of John William Thorley (buried with his wife Alice at
C3.12) and the father of David Edward Thorley (
B9.1/
F7.4) and
Victor Albert Thorley (
F3.28). His sister Una Thorley, too, is buried at
B18.5. His sister Ida and both of his parents are buried at
E 14.3,
E 14.4 and
E 14.5.
George was one of the six children of Maria nee Wallbank and John Thorley, Stoneleigh policeman, who had been transferred to Stoneleigh first from Nuneaton and then from Bishop's Tachbrook. By 1908 the family lived at the Police House on Birmingham Road.
George was born in Nuneaton on 18 December 1896, the third son. His parents went on to have three daughters. By the age of 14 he was working as a mechanic/driller at a car factory in 1911; he then served in the Great War in the 7th Battalion "Oxford and Bucks" Light Infantry, along with many of his Stoneleigh friends. His brother Samuel Ernest Thorley was fatally wounded at Gallipoli in 1915 and died in Cairo. [He is commemorated on the Stoneleigh church war memorial.]
In early 1921 George married Frances Lizzie Wigley and went on to have eight children, including, finally, twins Dorothy and David, born in 1937. They lived at what is now called Phoenix Cottage on Birmingham Road; by 1939 George was working as a miller at an aeroplane works. He died relatively young, aged 53, on 17 March 1950.
Frances Lizzie Wigley was the third child of the six born to George and Minnie Wigley in Northamptonshire. Her father was a boot-maker for the army when Frances was a small child, but later became a cowman. Frances was born on 5 January 1898 in Walgrave; at the age of 13 she was working as a servant for a couple in nearby Old, and ten years later married George Henry Thorley, the marriage being registered in Brixworth, Northamptonshire. Having moved to Stoneleigh with her husband in 1921, she remained in the village all her life and died twenty-one years after her husband, in early 1971, at the age of 73.