Walter Louis Cook (or Walter John Lewis as he was baptised) was born in Bristol in 1904, the youngest of three surviving children of Thomas Cook and his wife, Mary Janet (née Hayward). When Walter was baptised at the age of four in St Werburgh’s Church, Bristol, the family was living at 18 Warminster Road, and his father was a telephone lineman. The family was still there in 1911; Thomas Cook, who was originally from Bengeworth, Evesham, was described as a construction foreman for a telephone company.
Walter worked as a fish fryer but then, in 1923, he joined the Royal Navy (Service No D/K 60699). At the time of his marriage in July 1930 at St Werburgh’s Church, Bristol, to Nora Emily Vincent, he was described as a Stoker in the Royal Navy. Nora had been born and brought up in Badsey. Walter and Norah had one daughter, Mary Janet, born at Bengeworth a year later.
During the 1930s, the Cooks lived in Bristol but, at the outbreak of the Second World War, Nora returned with Mary to Badsey to live with her parents, Lewis and Annie Vincent, on Brewers Lane.
Not long after the move, tragedy hit the family when Walter Cook, aged 34, was killed on the aircraft carrier HMS Courageous when it was sunk by enemy action in the Bristol Channel on 17th September 1939. As he died at sea, he has no grave but is commemorated on the Plymouth Naval Memorial.
Both Nora and her daughter remained in Badsey for the rest of their lives.