'Dorothy and Archibald'
On the evening of August 27 1916, Private Archibald Knee, 25 years old, and of the Gloucestershire Regiment was due to return to his battalion on a train from Stroud station, cured of his German measles. On any other Sunday evening, Dorothy Beard of Gravel Hill, Burleigh, eighteen years young, would have been preparing for work at Brimscombe Mills. But Archibald missed his train, and Dorothy did not appear at work the next day. Instead, having walked out to Longfords Lake, hand in hand, they tied themselves together with the belt of his mackintosh, and they drowned in Iron Mills Pond, Avening, in the early hours of August 28 1916. Dorothy’s watch had stopped at 3.51 a.m. read more