Biography:
Cyril Gwyer was born 1 January 1886, the second son of Charles James Paul Gwyer DL and Alice Losh Gwyer of Eywood Hall, Titley, Herefordshire, and younger brother of Captain Charles Percy Gwyer (I 1896-1900) of the Welch Regiment, who was killed in action in 1915.
Cyril came to Winchester College from Mr. Rawnsley's school in Lyndhurst in September 1899 and was in I House, Turner's. He was Head of House in his last year, and played Win Coll Football but his great love was singing in Chapel choir.
He left Winchester December 1902 and in 1904 he went up to Christ Church, Oxford to read English. He also joined the Chapel choir there. He then joined the Indian Forestry Service, leaving England for Burma in 1910.
Cyril was home on leave at the outbreak of war and offered his services immediately, arriving at the front in May 1915 with the Duke of Lancaster's Yeomanry. He served with them till 1917, when he was transferred to the Grenadier Guards. He fell near St. Leger on 27 August 1918, just three months before the end of the War. It is believed he was hit by passing artillery fire whilst escorting information about enemy positions.
Mr. Gwyer married Constance Frances Monckton in April 1915 and left a son Geoffrey Charles Francis Gwyer (I 1930-1934), who was in turn killed in action, in Tunisia in 1943, when serving as a Captain in the Grenadier Guards, his father’s old regiment. Cyril Gwyer’s widow, Constance Gwyer had by then re-married, marrying Colonel Charles Fraser Kennedy, of Welburn Manor, Kirkbymoorside, Yorkshire. By this second marriage, she was the mother of John Kennedy (I 1936-40), who was killed in action over Norway in 1944. The family had thus lost four members of two generations in the two world wars – one of the heaviest sacrifices of any Wykehamist family.
Further information is available on the Christ Church, Oxford website: https://www.chch.ox.ac.uk/fallen-alumni/lieutenant-cyril-gwyer (Additional information by Henry Beaves, I)