Norman Edwin Heaven was born on 30^th June 1897 and baptised at the Congregationalist New Court Chapel, as St Mellitus Church was then known, on October 31^st the same year.  He lived with his parents, Edwin Frank Heaven and Agnes Amelia Heaven and his four older siblings (Sydney, Arthur, Winifred and Elsie) at 106 Wightman Road.  Norman’s father, Edwin was an active member of New Court; he was Treasurer and is one of the signatories on the organ contract signed in 1919.

Educated at The Stationer’s Company School – which stood where Stationer’s Park is now, on Mayfield Road, Hornsey – he was a Bank Clerk living at 147 Stapleton Hall Road N4 before joining the 16^th Batallion, the London Regiment (Territorial Force) in November 1915.  He served with the British Expeditionary Force in France and Flanders from July 1916.

On 1^st October 1916 he was wounded at the Somme and, on recovery, after a period of training at Bisley and Grantham, was made a Second Lieutenant in the 66^th Battalion, Machine Gun Corps in September 1917. He returned to France in October and was killed in action at Templeux (Somme, northern France) on 21^st March 1918. He was just 21 years old.

His commanding officer wrote: “I may say that I regarded him as a capable and promising young officer, who was greatly esteemed by his men”, and one of his men captured at the time and a prisoner of war until the Armsitice recalled: “He was a gentleman to all, and liked by everyone, and stuck to his gun until the end. He died a hero, and is buried near Rosnor and Templeux Quarries.”

Norman is also remembered – alongside another New Court soldier Arthur Bernard Schofield – at the Barclays Bank war memorial at the bank headquarters in Poplar, East London. The polished limestone panel records 362 names of those who died in the First World War. It was originally located at Barclays Bank HQ in Lombard Street, London, EC3. 

Norman’s older brother, Arthur Durrant Heaven, who returned home after the war, is also commemorated at St Mellitus.