A 1912 tragedy closer to home - the story of the Herefordshire man crushed by steamroller (From Hereford Times)

A 1912 tragedy closer to home - the story of the Herefordshire man crushed by steamroller

9:10am Sunday 15th April 2012 in Local News

As millions around the world remember the deaths of more than 1,500 people on the ill-fated Titanic a century ago, one Herefordshire couple are marking the centenary of another disaster much closer to home.

Rosemary Brown lost her grandfather Bryan Webb when the 36-yearold was crushed between an out-ofcontrol steamroller he was travelling in and a van that it was pulling.

The accident happened at Bredwardine and saw Mr Webb taken to hospital in Hereford but sadly die on April 16 at a time when sparse national newspaper reports were full of the passenger liner sinking on route to New York just hours earlier.

“We think he was steering the steamroller. He tried to take a bend and came off the road,” said Rosemary, who lives with husband Gerald in Fownhope.

Bryan, who was survived by his wife and five children, was a roadman who was travelling towards Kinnersley that fateful day with his stepfather William Lewis.

The accident was reported in the pages of the Hereford Times shortly afterwards.

“The roller went out of control, dashed through a gateway, tearing up the posts, and falling into a brook about six feet deep,” the report read.

“The driver, William Lewis, seems to have escaped without much injury, but Bryan Webb ... got pinned between the van and the engine.”

An inquest jury later returned a verdict of accidental death.

Rosemary will mark the centenary by taking flowers to Bryan’s grave in Kinnersley.