John King – Army Service Corps Training Depot, Grove Park

Retired railwayman John King has always been a keen local historian, and in 1983 he published Grove Park in the Great War. In the 1890s the area was home to Edith Nesbit author of The Railway Children, and less comfortably to the inmates of a large workhouse, which was quickly requisitioned by the military. John explains “Between 1914 and 1919 nearly 300,000 men and women passed through Grove Park ASC Depot in London. Some troops spent less than 24 hours there, while others were on 12-week training courses for the maintenance of various motor vehicles, which ranged from staff cars, to lorries and buses.”