Donald Priestley

[3][4][b] He was the third son of eight children of Joseph Edward Priestlay, then head teacher of the Abbey House school in Tewkesbury, and Henrietta, née Rice.

[5]: 7  His elder brother, Raymond, was a geologist in Robert Falcon Scott's ill-fated Terra Nova Expedition to the Antarctic from 1910 to 1913.

[5]: 10  Joyce married Herbert William Merrell, who served with the Gloucestershire Regiment (known as the "Glosters") in World War I.

[5]: 9–10 [Alfred Ernest "Alf"] Dipper is not the best man they have at Tewkesbury, for D. L. Priestley would be in the front rank if he could only afford the time to play regularly.

[28] He came into the side to replace Charles Barnett,[28] playing as an amateur in a team that consisted largely of professional players.

[2] In July 1910, Priestley made his final first class appearance against Worcestershire at the War Memorial Ground in Amblecote near Stourbridge.

[33] Priestley worked as a commercial representative and wheat buyer for his mother's family firm, William Rice and Company,[8][48] corn millers and seed merchants at Abbey Mills, Tewkesbury.

[49] Stanley worked as a clerk at the company but he left Tewkesbury in 1912 to follow Joseph to the University of Leeds where he became a member of the Officers' Training Corps.

[54][e] During World War I, Edith played pianoforte at concerts organised to entertain wounded soldiers at the Voluntary Aid Detachment hospital at Mitton Manor, Gloucestershire.

[8] He was killed by shell fire on 30 October 1917, during the Second Battle of Passchendaele, along with a large section of his platoon,[7] while leading them through waist-deep mud towards a German position in the Ypres Salient.

[66]: 180  Edith was working at Woodcote Park when her father received the letter from Priestley's platoon officer stating that he had been killed in action.

[7] His body was never recovered but he is commemorated on panel 153 of the Memorial to the Missing at the Commonwealth War Graves Commission Tyne Cot cemetery, near Passchendaele, Belgium.

[72] In March 1942, Raymond, then vice‑chancellor of the University of Birmingham, gifted money to Tewkesbury Grammar School to found two cricket prizes in memory of his brothers.

[74] After Priestley's death, Edith stayed at Richmond Lodge before moving to Hoo Farm at Deerhurst, Tewkesbury,[60] owned at the time by her father.

[54] After the end of World War II, she returned to London and died on 30 December 1975, aged 95, at St Mary's Hospital in Harrow Road, Paddington.

Monochrome photograph of Joseph Hubert Priestley's mother, Henrietta, and four sisters, Edith, Doris, Joyce, and Olive. His mother is seated and his sisters are shown standing
Priestley's mother and four sisters (from left to right), Edith, Doris, Joyce, and Olive, circa 1910 [ 1 ]
Monochrome photograph of Cullis sitting at her desk and looking over her left shoulder to the camera. There is a parcel and suitcase on the desk.
Edith's cousin, Winifred Cullis , was professor of physiology at the University of London in 1919
Colour photograph of the memorial stone wall and panels with war graves on grass shown to the right. There are red poppies growing in a flower bed to the left of the path and in front of the graves.
The memorial wall at Tyne Cot cemetery
Names are written in gold on a carved oak panel above a stone altar. The flags of Great Britain, France, USA, and the British Legion, surround the panel.
War memorial panel in Tewkesbury Abbey