Place Name
Originally Chapel Place. Donald William Alers Hankey (October 27, 1884 – October 12, 1916) was a prominent member of the local Edwardian-era charitable organisation the Oxford and Bermondsey Club, a welfare mission established in a former Wesleyan chapel which has since been knocked down. Donald Hankey was the son of an adventurer, Robert, who gone to Australia to become a sheep farmer, he returned to England with a fortune and an Australian wife. After attending Rugby School, the young Hankey enrolled at the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich where he received his commission and joined the Royal Garrison Artillery. A posting to Mauritius cut short his military career after he developed a prolonged illness and returned home. With his dead father’s fortune at his disposal, his thoughts turned towards a career in the Church. Among his concerns were helping the urban poor and he spent four months in residence at Rugby House, a mission in one of London’s roughest pockets of poverty. He later took up theological studies at Corpus Christi College Oxford and from there was introduced to the Oxford and Bermondsey Mission, established and maintained by former students in what was then a notoriously squalid neighbourhood. Restless, he visited his mother’s home country, before returning to Bermondsey shortly before the First World War. He enlisted in the ranks and was killed a little over two year later during the Battle of the Somme.
