Sydney Clarke was born on 5th May 1895 in Preston Brook and baptised on 6th June at the Primitive Methodist chapel on Aston Lane in Preston Brook. He was the son of Thomas H. Clarke (born at Thornton on Wirral) and his wife Elizabeth (born Staffordshire).
The 1901 census recorded the family living at Windmill Farm Cottages in Preston on the Hill. The father was a teamsman on a farm and five-year-old Sydney had a sister Lucy aged four years. Windmill Farm belonged to Alfred Broome.
Ten years later Sydney was a servant at Moss Wood Hall in Stretton, working for a farmer called Aaron Sankey.
Sydney served in the Machine Gun Corps during the Great War. He had the service number 88781 according to the absent voters’ list of 1918 and Spring 1919 for Preston on the Hill. By the autumn he is recorded as a resident and was living with his parents again in 1920 and 1921.
On 21st December 1922 Sydney married Eva Booth at St Peter’s Church of England church in Oughtrington near Lymm. They would have Edna in 1924, Lilly in 1925, Eileen in 1930 and possibly May in 1935.
The 1939 register recorded the family as living at 43, Heath Lane, Croft, Warrington Rural District. Sydney was employed as a mental nurse and the two eldest daughters worked in a cotton mill.
Sydney Clarke died on 14th December 1966 at Croft, predeceasing Eva by ten years. He was 71 years old.