PRESSLER, Arthur Pte. 20963

Arthur Pressler was born in Chorley in 1887 – his father having emigrated from Germany as a child in 1857. He lived at 9 Cunliffe Street, Chorley but was a Postman in the nearby village of Eccleston – the 1911 Census describes him as being “A Rural Postman”, living at 20 Cunliffe Street; he worshipped at St. Mary’s Church in the town.

Arthur joined the Chorley Pals in July 1915 serving as a Stretcher Bearer and playing in the Battalion Band. He was wounded at Serre on the 1st July 1916, seeing fellow ‘Pals’ and stretcher bearers – Hunt, Fairweather and McDermott, also wounded.

He was a single man in 1911 and upon enlisting in the Army, but married his first wife, Margaret Ellen Potts after the war; they had one son. After his first wife died, he married Eleanor Hacking at Accrington in 1926 and set up home at Leasowe Road, Wallasey on the Wirral. By now a Cotton Salesmen, he had a son in 1928 and twins (a boy and girl) in 1934. In March 1941 the Presslers moved from Wallasey to Claybrooke Parva in Leicestershire. Eleanor Pressler had been a Private Nurse in the 1920s before her marriage and had worked in Claybrooke for a family called Grewcock. She had remained in touch with the family and they offered the Pressler family the opportunity to move away from the nightly bombings of the German Air Force (it is believed the house in Wallasey may have been hit by a bomb before they moved to Leicestershire).

Arthur took a job with Sketchley (the dry Cleaning company) in Hinckley, and possibly became a member of the local Home Guard Unit in Lutterworth during the Second World War. In 1950, he moved his family to a house he had built in Claybrooke Parva, near Lutterworth – he called it “The Leasowes”.

Arthur passed away in October 1967 and is buried in Claybrooke Parva Cemetery with his second wife Eleanor (she died in 1955).

Acknowledgement: May we thank Arthur’s grandson, Robert Pressler, for supplying so much of the above information.