J's Story.
It is difficult to state for certain the identity of Gunner J Higgins, though the Alsager parish magazine of 1915 mentions him as one who enlisted in the autumn of 1914, so he must have had a strong connection to the town.
It is possible that he was James Henry Higgins, born 1890, at Thurlwood, in the parish of Odd Rode. He was the son of John Higgins (1857 - 1926) and Elizabeth Woodward (1851–1899). By 1901, his parents were living on Crewe Road, Alsager, next door to the The Lodge Inn. James enlisted into the Cheshire Regiment in December 1914, at Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent, regimental number 16697, and may have been attached to an Artillery unit in the Cheshires, which would explain his rank of Gunner. He was discharged from service because of his wounds, but there is no record of his death in England, so this suggestion cannot be verified. His name was not included in a memorial service in 1917 in Alsager.
No hint of soldiers' regiments is given in the newspaper account of June 1920, when the War Memorial was unveiled, but we can assume that all the soldiers named on the memorial had died between 1914 and 1920.
It is possible to name those soldiers who Gunner Higgins is not ....
For example, Private William Higgins, whose name also appears on the memorial, had an uncle James Henry Higgins, born in 1879 near Alsager, who had enlisted as a gunner in the Royal Artillery in 1900, regimental number 5706. However, that "Gunner J Higgins" married Edith Bayes in 1919, and was still alive at the time of the 1921 census, and living in Scholar Green in 1924, so he is almost certainly not the J Higgins on the memorial.)
If you have any information about Gunner J Higgins, please contact Cheshire Roll.