Thank you everybody for your replies. Some details:
The stepfather was Frederick William Gilbert born at Blean in Kent in the first quarter of 1876 according to the GRO index. I don’t have his exact date of birth but he was baptised the 29th March 1876. He married my grandmother at Gravesend in Kent the 2nd July 1921. I have a copy of their marriage certificate. His profession is given as Blacksmith, as it had been prior to the war. Fortunately his father had a rather uncommon first name, Sion, which has permitted me to isolate the stepfather from the dozens of other Frederick Gilberts which seem to have populated Kent at this time.
My grandmother was Valentine Renault, aged 31 according to the marriage certificate. Her father is given as Alfred Renault, profession Baker.
One discordant note on the marriage certificate is Frederick Gilbert’s age which is given as 39 years instead of 46 which would make his year of birth 1882 instead of 1876. However his birth and baptism records and the 1881 and 1891 censuses all confirm his year of birth as 1876. What is more, by the time of the 1939 Register his year of birth has returned to 1876! Did he want to diminish the 15 year age gap with my grandmother or perhaps he had reduced his age to join the army?
My mother was born in 1917, although not in June as I stated by error in my post but on the 29th of May (Oak apple day as she was fond of reminding us). I don’t have any documentary proof of this – it’s just something that the family has always known.
I don’t know if it would have been necessary for my mother or grandmother to apply for naturalisation. I’ve always assumed that in those days marrying a British citizen was enough to make them British also. There is no mention of them in the on-line naturalisation records at the PRO at Kew.
I don’t have any other information on my grandmother or her father. In fact I’m searching for my grandfather with the hope of finding a clue to help me trace my French ancestors and, hopefully, their descendants. The great difficulty is that although scans of most French birth marriage and death records are viewable on-line they aren’t centralised – they’re held by each town hall so if you don’t know the town it’s difficult to find the person. One can of course search town by town but as there are 2366 in the 4 departements where the British Army was principally active such a search would take a very very long time!
