Killed in action aged 30 
Buried at Noeux-les-Mines Communal Cemetary I.K.16.

Christopher Cecil was the elder son of Christopher John Hume Tower JP, DL for County of Essex in 1876, and his second wife Cecilia, daughter of the Rev Robert Beauchamp Tower and the widow of Osgood Hanbury.

Mr Tower’s first wife had died in childbirth, and he lost the daughter of that marriage a month later.

In 1891, six-year-old Christopher is living at Weald Hall, Billericay in Essex, with his parents (his father ‘living on own means‘), four-year-old brother and 14 servants.

The house had been in the hands of the Tower family since 1752.

Christopher was educated at Eton and Christ Church, matriculating in 1903.

In 1913 he married Dorothy Cynthia, the daughter of Brig-Gen Sir Herbert Conyers Surtees.

Mobilized 4 August 1914, a Lieutenant in the Essex Yeomanry Household Cavalry and Cavalry of the Line (incl. Yeomanry and Imperial Camel Corps), aide-de-camp to the Major General of 12th Division France. Killed in action at Vermelles, near Loos, France.

Memorial to Christopher Tower

At St Peter's Church, South Weald, near Brentwood in Essex, two wooden crosses adjacent to the memorial in the Tower Chapel at the church appear to have been brought back from France and may be his original grave markers.

The stone memorial says his rank was lieutenant but one wooden cross says captain. He may have received a temporary promotion or it may have been a battlefield error.

His younger brother, Hugh, died in the Royal Flying Corps the following year.