John Rattray Clark
John Rattray Clark was not a Stoneleigh man, but was married in Stoneleigh. He was born in 1885, the son of James and Julia Clark of Sandyford, Glasgow. By 1911, in his mid-twenties, he was living with a cousin, Robert Gellatly, in Coventry, who was a foreman in a naval ordnance engineering works. John himself was a clerk in a cycle factory; one assumes that both men had come to Coventry for employment.
How he met his future wife is unknown, but he married Lucy Walton on February 10th 1915. By this time he was already a sergeant in the 7th Bn Cameron Highlanders, having joined up in Inverness in September 1914; he must have travelled to Scotland specifically to be part of a Scots regiment. In April 1915 he was training on Salisbury Plain and sailed on the SS Arundel from Folkestone to Boulogne on July 8th. He died on September 25th during the particularly vicious Battle of Loos, when 687 of his battalion became casualties. Although his service record survives it records that he left "no effects", a poignant reminder of the chaos of battle. He is buried at Loos Cemetery, Loos-en-Gohelle, Pas de Calais, Reference XII A1.