Killed in action aged 23
Buried at the Guizancourt Farm Cemetery Gouy (A.30)
Stuart William was born in Oxford, the third child and second son of Charles Thomas and Stella Austin Payne. He was baptised at St Philip and St James Church on 2 May 1895.
In the 1891 census, Charles was described as a gardener, but in 1901, living at 78 Kingston Road, he was a dairyman as his father had been before him.
In 1911, Stuart was a college servant, aged 15, living with his parents at 78 Kingston Road.
Stuart first served in the Oxfordshire & Buckinghamshire Light Infantry (Service no 14569) and then as a Lance Corporal in 7th Battalion of the Duke of Edinburgh’s (Wiltshire Regiment) (Service no 14010).
He was killed in action in France on 7 October 1918.
His name appears on the First World War Memorial at St Margaret’s Church in Oxford.
Stuart’s older brother, Charles Austin Payne (28) died of wounds in France just thirteen days later on 20 October 1918, and their father died in 1920.
(Lance-Corporal Payne’s name appears in a list at the end of the Memorial devoted to former choristers, college servants, or men with some other close connection with Christ Church.)