Lieutenant Brian TAYLOR
Dover Platoon, Home Guard

Date of birth: 27th October 1909
Date of death: 23rd March 1942

Killed on active service aged 32
Buried at Dover Municipal Borough Cemetery
He was born at Wingham on the 27th of October 1909, the son of Alfred Harold Taylor, accountant in the engineering industry, and Jane (nee Pope) of "The Chestnuts", Broom Hill, Wingham, near Canterbury.

He was educated at the Junior King's School from September 1918 and at the King's School Canterbury from April 1923 to July 1927, where he was in Holme House. He became a house monitor in 1926 and later Head of House. He was a member of the Cricket XI in 1926 and 1927.

On leaving school he went to work for Shell Mex Ltd from 1927 to 1930 and played rugby for Canterbury RFC. He then joined the East Kent Road Car Company in Canterbury, later moving to Dover as local manager and living at Court Cottage in Kearnsey. During the war the staff at the company formed a Home Guard unit and he was appointed as a Lieutenant in the Dover Platoon.

At 7.15pm on the 23rd of March 1942 a Junkers 88 aircraft dropped an armour piercing bomb on the East Kent Garage which penetrated the shelter inside killing most of those within. Brian Taylor, who was deputising as a fire watcher, was killed when his office was demolished.

He is commemorated in the Dover Book of Remembrance.
Holme House

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