Early Life :

Family :

Education & Career :

Arthur attended Marlborough College (C3) and then followed in his father’s footsteps, becoming a wine merchant and partner in his father’s Girm, Norris & Gilbey.

He married, moved to Croydon and had several children. When his father retired, Arthur merged the family business with another Girm. The business did well and he moved to a large new house, Longshaw, when the railway came to Chipstead in the late 1890s. The Norrises moved to Court House (now St Anne’s School), Banstead, in 1910.

Arthur was a keen swimmer and sportsman, playing rugby and cricket in his youth, and loved to ride with the Surrey Staghounds, of which he was honorary secretary for many years. He was a well-known Gigure in Surrey society, a vice-president of most of the local agricultural shows and was twice Master of the Company of Distillers.

Locally, he was President of the Chipstead & District Rifle Club, represented Chipstead on the board of the Reigate & Redhill Cottage Hospital and was a foundation manager of Chipstead’s village school. He was a staunch Conservative and was politically active, chairing meetings in support of the Conservatives and Unionists in Chipstead during the closely fought elections of 1906 and 1910.

Service Life:

Campaigns:

• The First World War 1914-1918, World-wide.

Natural causes is attributed those deaths due to causes that were not directly associated with the war. Included in this are wartime deaths resulting from, for example, theSpanish Influenza pandemic and its associated pneumonia problems and other attributions such as age and exhaustion. It also groups those who through Post Traumatic Stress committed suicide as a result of their experiences.

Detail :

Arthur spent the last half of 1915 as a quartermaster in a Royal Horse Artillery rest camp at Port Said but rejoined his battery in early 1916 after being commissioned as a lieutenant. Within a few weeks it was found that he had a heart condition that was exacerbated by active service and he was invalided home. After a brief period of recuperation, he returned to light duties at H.A.C. headquarters in London.

On 10th February 1917, hours after returning from duty, Arthur collapsed at home in Banstead and died soon afterwards. He was buried at St Margaret’s, Chipstead, with full military honours. He was 63 years old, the oldest Banstead man to die in the war.

Masonic :

Resident of 44 Marle Lane upon initiation in 1877 into Mount Moriah Lodge No. 34. He resigned from this Lodge in January 1880. He then joined FitzRoy Lodge 23rd January 1880. He further joined the East Surrey (Croydon) Lodge of Concord on 12th January 1887, where he is listed as a Gentleman of Croydon. And lastly, he was a petitioning and Founder member of the Old Malburian Lodge No 3533 when warranted to meet 26th April 1911.

Source :

The project globally acknowledges the following as sources of information for research across the whole database:

• The Commonwealth War Graves Commission
• The (UK) National Archives
• Ancestry.co.uk - Genealogy, Family Trees & Family History online
• ugle.org.uk - The records of the United Grand Lodge of England including the Library and Museum of Freemasonry

Additional Source:

• Founder Researchers : Paul Masters & Mike McCarthy
• Researcher : Bruce Littley
• Researcher : Tom Hawley