Last Saturday the Mayor of Bideford, Peter Lawrence, unveiled a plaque on the old Bideford Railway Station dedicated to the memory of Elisabeth Deneys, a young Belgian refugee who was killed on the tracks there in 1917. 

Over a quarter of a million Belgians came to find sanctuary the UK at the start of the First World War, when the German army overran Belgium – it remains the largest influx of refugees in British history. Before the war, Belgium was one of the foremost European armament producers and the refugee population included skilled workers. 

Belgian refugees were billeted in communities all around the UK including North Devon. A 1915 report stated that there were 113 Belgian refugees in Bideford billeted in 35 houses. The local Committee ‘was indebted to the many residents the town who had taken in the Belgians and treated them so generously.’ 

Many of the refugees found work in local potteries, which were short of workers with so many men called into the army, and at the acetone factory in East the Water. Acetone, at that time produced by distillation of timber, was an essential ingredient in the production of explosives. The factory was run for the government by Kynoch, a Birmingham armaments manufacturer. 

In 1917, one of the Belgian workers at Kynoch’s was Joannes Deneys, aged about 38, who lived with his 11-year-old daughter, Elisabeth, at Gas Works Cottage, East the Water. Elisabeth probably attended East the Water School on Torrington Street and on the evening of Monday 30 July 1917 she was playing on the railway when the night mail train entered the station. She was knocked down and as a result of her terrible injuries died later that night in Bideford Hospital. She is buried in Bideford Old Town Cemetery along with five other Belgian refugees who died whilst living here.  

At the ceremony to unveil the plaque, our chair, Mike Teare, highlighted the parallels with Ukrainian refugees currently living in North Devon in about the same numbers as their Belgian counterparts a century ago. The plaque, which was erected following a presentment made at Bideford’s Manor Court earlier this year, is dedicated to Elisabeth Deneys and in memory of all those fleeing conflicts, in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, who have found safety here and the generosity of the people of Bideford who have supported them.