Robert Longton Darbyshire was born in 1923 at Warwick, the only son of John William Darbyshire and his wife Elsie Louise (nee Longton). The Longton family were from Winwick and the Darbyshire family from Warrington. Robert’s parents were married in 1922 and went to live in the Warwick area, where Robert and his sister Margaret Elsie (known as Topsy) were born.
Sadly, Robert’s mother died in 1925 not long after Topsy was born. She was 27 years old. John Darbyshire came back to Cheshire where the Longtons had moved to farm in Hatton in Daresbury parish. His wife’s maternal line was the Parr family of Hatton. John re-married and he and his second wife Margaret settled in Stockton Heath. In 1934 they had a son, half-brother to Robert and Topsy.
By the time of the outbreak of World War Two, the father was employed as a scale and weighing machine service adjuster. Topsy was at boarding school in Wales and Robert had already joined the Royal Navy in 1938 at the age of fifteen years. He served in the Royal Navy throughout the war and on until 1953 by which time he was thirty years old.
In 1954 Robert married local girl Jean Spann and they had three children.
Robert Longton Darbyshire passed away in 2012 aged 88 years of age. His wife died five years later. They had lived in Appleton for many years.