Eric Castle

Bank: Westminster Bank

Place of work: Rye Branch

Died: 10 February 1943

Eric Donald Frost Castle was born on 18 February 1893, the son of Grace and Ernest Edward Castle, both of whom were schoolteachers. He joined the staff of London County & Westminster Bank in March 1912. Two years later - several months before the outbreak of the First World War - he volunteered for military service. He went on to serve throughout the war, rising to the rank of Second Lieutenant in the Indian Army by 1918. After demobilisation he returned to the bank, which from 1923 was known as Westminster Bank. 

Castle was married in 1923 to Bertha Muriel Herington. She died in 1934. He was married for a second time in 1942, to Kathleen Madge Jenkins.

From February 1938 Castle was chief clerk at the bank's Rye branch. He was killed on the night of 10 February 1943, when the house in which he was a lodger, 1 Havelock Villas, Rye, was struck by a bomb. His landlady was also killed. Castle was 49 years old. 

Eric Castle is commemorated on a bank war memorial at NatWest Hastings branch.