AFTER THE CONFLICT - Cumbrian War Memorials

New web site - South Cumbrian War Memorials - The Men

2012-01-07T23:52:00.000Z

Over the years that I have been researching War Memorials throughout Cumbria a friend of mine, Andy Moss, has been steadily researching the names that appear on the memorials in the southern part of the county. It is very much an ongoing project.

The website can be accessed here

If you are looking for the service record of a paricular man this is the place to look. Andy has also accumulated a huge archive of supporting documentation.

A Crimean fatality

2012-01-05T22:33:00.004Z

Just back from a week with my daughter in Portsmouth. Some nice presents, including a history, by Figes, of the Crimean War. He is a spectacular historian. An earlier book, 'Natasha's Dance', is an illuminating treatise on Russian identity. While away I also bought an old Victorian print from a little antique shop in Southsea, 'The Thin Red Line', reproduced from a painting of 1881 by Robert Gibb. It depicts the 93rd of Foot, Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders, holding off the Russian cavalry at Balaklava on October 25 1854.

Both book and print put me in mind of a memorial at St Columba's church, Warcop. It is the lych gate, erected in memory of a certain Captain Preston.

Captain Henry Preston, son of the Rev William Preston of Warcop Hall, late vicar of Warcop church and Lord of the Manor, died aged 28 on September 8, 1855 leading his company of the 90th Light Infantry (Perthshire Volunteers) in the storming of the Redan at Sevastopol in the Crimean War. The gate and a window in the church were created by his mother, brother and sisters. There are two further memorial windows, including one provided by fellow Officers. I don't have photographs.

However, the Crimean campaign was photographed by Roger Fenton who produced some of the earliest and most extraordinary images of conflict in existence. Among his collection is a group of Officers of the 90th L.I.

Unfortunately none are named but it may well be that young Capt., Preston is pictured.

As was the case is most of the British Empire's colonial wars memorials were erected on the battlefields and a significant number may be seen throughout the Crimea, specifically on the more famous features; Cathcart's Hill, Telegraph Hill, The Alma - and at Balaklava where an obelisk, much like a Great War memorial, commemorates all the Brits who died in the campaign.

Although Henry Preston hailed from Warcop his Regiment was Scottish, specifically from Perth. And so it is no surprise that a memorial to the 90th Light Infantry (Perthshire Volunteers) may be seen in St John's Kirk in that city.

The memorial, sculpted by Samuel Manning (Junior) of London, was erected in 1857 and bears the names of five Officers of the 90th L.I., four of whom died in the storming of the Redan, including Henry Preston.

The Preston family's service and sacrifice for Queen and Country did not end with Henry. Just three years after his demise his 20 year old younger brother, Moyles Preston, died of wounds on September 27 1858 while serving with the same Regiment at Alumbagh en route to relieve Lucknow during the Indian Mutiny (or the First War of Indian Independence!).

The Old Palace at Alumbagh, middle distance left, was held by by the mutineers as an outpost to Lucknow. After it was taken it served as a command centre for Henry Havelock's assault on Lucknow itself. Young Moyles Preston was most probably wounded in this preliminary action.

He too has a memorial window in Warcop church.

Such were the families who served the Queen Empress.

Clearly I need to access the church with my new camera!

Happy Christmas & Yule and a prosperous(!) 2012 to all who visit

2011-12-24T01:15:00.001Z

Alston Part 2 - Nowell Oxland, poet, player and Cumbrian,

2011-12-24T01:10:00.003Z

Just had a posting from a guy called Stephen C who is interested in the Alston memorial, specifically one man named on the memorial screen - Nowell Oxland. It appears that he was a local Cumbrian poet, rugby player and son a former vicar of St Augustine's parish church. Stephen is clearly a rugby player and enthusiast and has set up a website describing the commemoration of the men of Rosslyn Park Rugby Club, Roehampton who died in the Great War. Check it out here.

Of particular interest to me was the information that the reredos, featuring two painted panels depicting Saints George & Michael(?), are in fact portraits of Lt Noel Oxland, 6th Borders.

The memorial screen can be seen here with the reredos behind the altar. On either side of this reredos the painted panels can just be made out.

That on the left depicts St Michael, if indeed this the right attribution..

On the right, St George.

It is self evident that they depict the same man.

Stephen's biography of Oxland on his website is most interesting and includes a photo which is clearly the same man as the portraits on the painted panels ....

Born in Cumberland, a vicar's son who attended Durham School as a Scholar, rower and XV rugby player and from 1909, Worcester College, Oxford, reading history when war broke out. While at Oxford he played rugby for Rosslyn Park (1910-11 XV photo), Richmond, Middlesex and Cumberland. He was gazetted as a 2nd Lieut, 6th Border Regiment in 1914 (staying loyal to his northern roots although his parents now lived in Portsmouth) and went to the Dardanelles,Turkey in June 1915 (as did Arthur Dingle and several other Park players).....

His poem 'Outward Bound' appeared in the Times in August 1915, and can be found in many anthologies. Written en route to Gallipoli, he invokes the past invasion by the Greeks at Troy (across the Dardanelles) but dwells more on his fond memories of his home county:

We shall pass in summer weather/We shall come at eventide.../One with Cumberland for ever/We shall go not forth again.

What a lovely sentiment. A Cumbrian lad indeed!

Oxland was killed on August 9th 1915 aged 24, two days after the 6th Border's Brigade had taken Green Hill and Chocolate Hill, Gallipoli. He is buried in Green Hill Cemetery.

Thanks Stephen and sorry for the lousy quality of the photos!

A precious little document.

2011-11-26T22:36:00.003Z

I have just realised that what is probably the most poignant little memorial I have found in my years of researching, indeed one of the best, has not been described!

When first looking for memorials, sometime after the millennium, I had no idea how many memorials there were in South Lakes and simply drove around, checked out village and town centres and looked in churches. It very soon became apparent that - a) there were memorials everywhere and - b) many had been lost.Thus it was wonderful to find one that was long thought lost.

While looking in Staveley in Cartmel church, the warden mentioned in passing that there had been a memorial in the village school, now the village hall, which lies beside the church. She remembered it was in a cupboard for years but having taken a look it was no longer there. After much chuntering and encouragement it turned up in the office of a local business.

Badly damaged with damp, unframed, but what a gem, a rare survival.

Slightly smaller than A4 it was drawn up by the children of Staveley in Cartmel village school on 24 May 1915 and lists the names of those village lads who had joined up in the great surge of volunteering of 1914/15. I imagine the teacher actually drew it.

The language is naturally the 'elevated rhetoric' or 'language of courage' that emerged during the Great War.

What have I done for you 'England my England'.

Sadly I took this pic years ago with a rubbish 2mp camera and I can't read it!

Colton's lovely memorials

2011-11-23T23:54:00.003Z

As I have said on this blog often, communities throughout the country went to great lengths to find and erect memorials that they considered appropriate for men and women who had served and died in the years 1914-19. And so most of the memorials that are encountered, certainly in Cumbria, exist as a consequence of this process. However, there is a case to be made for memorials being foisted on communities by social elites; gentry, vicars, weekending industrialists, etc. Askam in Furness is arguably an example.

Another, in a less conspicuous way, might be Colton.

Colton is an ancient community in the fells above the valley of the Crake. Its church, consecrated in 1575, is dedicated to All Saints. A beautiful place.

And of course it contains war memorials.

The primary object of remembrance is a lovely window on the south wall of the nave. The imagery is quite odd. It depicts Saints George and Alban but wearing Tudor costume, probably a reference to the church's origins. It was created by Abbot & Co of Lancaster.

Below are two brass plaques naming the dead of the two World Wars.

But there is a secondary memorial mounted on the wall at the west end of the nave. It is a triptych with a central panel bearing the names of the dead and two doors with the names of those who served and returned.

This shrine (with or without the doors?) was given to the church by ColonelDobson of Rusland in 1919. Such objects were created by Hughes Bolckow & Co, shipbreakers & builders of Blythe, Northumberland from the timbers of HMS Britannia, formerly Prince of Wales, a line of battle ship of c1849. Hughes Bolckow acquired the ship for breaking in 1916 and took the opportunity to utilise the well seasoned exotic timbers that she provided in abundance to create all sorts of objects. Folding chairs were designed with woundedsoldiers in mind - 'their high back is very restful, but does not interfere withthe hat when seated' - tea trolleys appropriate for - 'hospitals and nursinghomes they ease the extra work brought by the war'. Crucially for this posting there were threepatterns of memorial shrine, the namescould be added - 'in black at a halfpenny a letter, or in gold at a penny aletter'.

There are a number of examples of the shrine across the country.

A newspaper account of April 1923 states that Colonel Dobson had the doors added, again at his own expense.

Sale of Blawith church and its memorials

2011-08-22T01:18:00.000+01:00

Time passes and the world changes. Over the decades the expression of Christian faith has declined and as a consequence many churches and chapels have closed. One such has been the church of St John the Baptist at Blawith, a small community at the southern end of Lake Coniston. For many years it was in the care of the Redundant Churches Trust but it has now been sold. The hope was that it would be acquired for affordable local housing but sadly it is to become a private, and no doubt, expensive residence. But it was slowly falling apart.

After the Great War a number of memorials were placed within the church, principally a Shrigley & Hunt window bearing stock figures of St Michael, left and St George.

On the sill of the window is a brass plaque with the names of the village dead. Below this is an ornate wooden shelf with the word 'In Remembrance'. No doubt many floral tributes were placed here in the years after the war.

These memorials were installed in 1921 after money was raised in the townships of Blawith, Water Yeat & Nibthwaite by selected ladies who resolutely knocked on every door. Some gave a few shillings, one or two a few pennies. But it was at least inclusive, everyone had an input.

A further board was created by a tradesman in Nibthwaite who painted the names of all the men and boys of the community who served. A photo will appear here in a while. Both this, which last week had disappeared, and, I think, the brass plaque are to be relocated to Water Yeat village hall. And the shelf? The window is to remain in place and any new owners must get permission from the church commissioners to move or remove it. But will people be allowed to view it?

Memorials at Mansergh

2011-05-07T19:25:00.002+01:00

There are some wonderful quiet corners in Cumbria, outside central lakeland. A particularly lovely place is Mansergh a dispersed parish on the west bank of the Lune north of Kirby Lonsdale.There is a delightful lane that runs alongside the river northwards to the Kendal - Kirby Road. The church, St Peter's, is a Paley & Austin creation of 1880 and has an unusual saddleback roof.

The porch of the church is a memorial of the coronation of Edward VII in 1902.

The parish memorial is in the churchyard outside the east end of the nave, dedicated to

'the lads of Mansergh who fought and died for their King and Country in the Great War'

This is clearly a memorial from a local monumental mason's stockbook.

The Second War names were added after 1945.

Inside the church is a Roll of Honour utilising a commonly encountered pre-printed format. But there is also a rather unique memorial. Indeed, it is the only example I have come across. A list of names of the village boys who died in the Great War written on the fly leaf of the church's bible.

Peace Window at Arnside

2011-01-09T23:27:00.000Z

As I have suggested elsewhere there are a significant number of windows in Cumbria that were placed as memorials. The vast majority date from the time of the Great War; some are community, some commemorate individuals. However, at Arnside Methodist church there is a rather unusual Peace Window.

Unveiled by Major Reverend W Rushby, MC, Chaplain to the Forces, on July 10, 1921 it was made by Barrowclough and Sanders and cost £310. Allen Barrowclough & Joseph Newbold Sanders remain elusive characters. They have windows at Scotforth, Lancaster & Churchtown nr Southport but precisely who they were I don't know.

It has an unusual iconography. St Michael, left, is predictable but Joshua, right, is not. But then he was Moses' right hand man and conquered 'The Kingdom', Canaan, so I guess his purpose here is to signify a biblically righteous military victory. Christ the King whose feet rest on a rainbow is flanked by two angels, that on the left holding a wreath, on the right a lyre. Crouching beside a fountain, below Christ, is a dashing young knight sans arms, his work done.

The window's dedication is;

A Thanks Offering for the Restoration

of Peace after the Great War

1914 1918

Great War Tanks in Cumbria and elsewhere

2011-01-09T00:26:00.002Z

After the Great War there was some confusion as to precisely what was being commemorated. A military victory for sure, perhaps even a moral victory over dark forces judging by the rhetoric. But at a terrible cost in blood and treasure. This schizophrenia is reflected in memorialisation.

In the first flush of 1919 - 20 the celebration of an overwhelming and complete military victory prompted the acceptance by communities all over the country of redundant or captured military hardware. Cumbria was no different and in towns and villages across the county all sorts of strange objects began to appear, on village greens, in parks and indeed any open space.

Probably the most common was the Field Gun.

Thousands of these had been captured at the war's end and they were quite eagerly sought after as exciting and exotic ways for those at home to engage with the grim realities of the conflict. Many places acquired them; I am aware of examples at Sedbergh, Ulverston, Carlisle, Hawkshead and Coniston, which probably had 2! I have heard rumours of many more. At Ulverston the council accepted the offer of their Field Gun with the observation that it would '.. keep company with the German Howitzer on the school field'. At Hawkshead the gun came with a trench mortar, wire cutters and other assorted hardware.

The Coniston gun had an interesting history. It was placed outside the Ruskin Museum in the village until one dark night when Jim Hewitson, the village's VC, came out of the pub with a bellyful of Hartley's Best Bitter and together with other veterans dragged it down to the lake and chucked it in with the observation that they had seen enough of such things in France. It was raised by local divers about the 1960s and eventually ended up in the private collection of the late 'Happy' Wilks at Ulverston Drill Hall. No idea where it is now.

These guns, however, were not the most imposing items of hardware. The tanks take that place. Over two hundred were offered to those towns throughout the realm that had excelled at War Savings. Again there were probably more distributed than were officially recorded. In Cumbria they appeared at Carlisle, Windermere, Workington, Whitehaven(?), Barrow(?) & Ulverston.

Ulverston's tank arrived by train and was driven through the streets followed by dozens of hysterical kids until it reached a open space at the bottom of Market Street where it was put onto a plinth. It remained in place until about 1940 when many of those that had survived were scrapped. A dear elderly lady told me that prior to its demise it had become a very convenient convenience on Friday and Saturday nights when the pubs closed. Indeed it seems the whiff permeated the whole area. The roundabout on the A590 is still called Tank Square.

Windermere's tank was scrapped in 1937. Contrary to popular belief they were not veterans of Cambrai or the Breaking of the Hindenberg Line but training vehicles or surplus from stock.

Though I was aware of these tanks in Britain I was astonished to discover their existence in Ukraine. While surfing an amazing Russian website/blog I came across a load of images of two Great War tanks being renovated at Lugansk.

In their fully restored condition they stand as sentries below the entrance to a newly created 'Heroes of the Revolution Museum' in the town. Whether that is White or Red Heroes remains to be ascertained!

Wonderful! They even have their guns!

Memorial on Great Carrs

2010-12-09T20:57:00.000Z

Throughout Cumbria there are hundreds of sites where aircraft have crashed over the years. Some of these were civilian but most were military. Of the latter a significant number fell to earth during the second world war.

Perhaps the most famous crash site is that on Great Carrs, a wild fell lying to the south of Wrynose.

On the night of October 22 1944 Handley Page Halifax LL505 FD-S was on a night training exercise flying out of RAF Topcliffe, Yorkshire. It was part of 1659 Heavy Conversion Unit in No 6 Group, Bomber Command.

On the fateful night Pilot John Johnston flew low over the hills in an easterly direction so that the navigator could get a ground fix. However, the aircraft hit the ridge between Great Carrs and Swirl How before plunging over the crest. All 8 crew were killed.

The crew were:

Pilot - F/O JohnA Johnston, RCAF (C/29783), aged 27, of Carp, Ontario, Canada.

Navigator - F/O FrancisA Bell, RCAF (J/39888), aged 33, of Hampton, New Brunswick, Canada.

BA - P/O Robert NWhitle, RCAF (J/38243), aged 20, of Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada.

Flight Eng - Sgt HarveyE Pyche, RCAF (R/225354), aged 21, of New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, Canada.

Flight Eng - SgtWilliam B Ferguson, RAFVR (1826294), aged 19, of Caldercruix, Scotland.

Wireless Op / AG - SgtCalvin G Whittingstall, RCAF (R/198207), aged 20, of Mount Dennis, Ontario, Canada.

AG - Sgt Donald FTitt, RCAF (R/271259), aged 19, of Rockwood, Ontario, Canada.

AG - Sgt GeorgeRiddoch, RCAF (R/259938), aged 20, of Sarnia, Ontario, Canada.

Ferguson was buried at New Monkland Cemetery, Lanarkshire. The rest of the crew were buried together at Blacon cemetery, Chester.

At some time a cairn was constructed on Great Carrs and bits of the aircraft brought to it, specifically the under carriage. More recently a memorial plaque was placed at the site.

The dispossessed

2010-12-05T00:34:00.003Z

We in Britain celebrate victories over our enemies, the Axis & Japan, in 1918 & 1945. But we lament the loss of influence in the world, moving from global superpower to American poodle, by way of Suez & Butcher Blair. And while watching a stiff upper lipped Sir John Mills winning the battle we give little thought, beyond sometimes rather tasteless jokes, to the defeated peoples. The systems they fought for, certainly between 1939-45, were truly evil Empires. Russian POWs, Poles, Gypsies, Gays, Jews, Far East POWs, Chinese, the natives of many Asian countries and myriad others will affirm that. So it was OK to defeat them.

But I am reminded sometimes of how we, the Allies, behaved like Avenging Angels. The true purpose behind the bombing of the ancient towns of Germany or Japan has yet to be honestly addressed.

Mediaeval Konigsberg was one such, bombed in 1944. The historic districts of Altstadt, Löbenicht and Kneiphof was obliterated, with the dome, castle, university (old and new), the old quarter and all the churches blown away. So much of Europe's achievement was destroyed for little or no gain.
What a price to demand of our foes.

In those acts we, the victors, stand accused.

Nor did it stop there....

Germany lost so much. Only through Google Earth did I come to fully realise that East Prussia was entirely stripped from the country. Indeed after 1945 Konigsberg became Kaliningrad, a wholly Russian Oblast, fully endorsed at Potsdam by Churchill, Roosevelt & Stalin. It is now as Russian as Moscow or Volga/Stalin-grad. It was ethnically cleansed. The entire surviving German population of more than 200,000 was forcibly expelled by the Russians in 1945/6 and the great city and its landscape was resettled by Russians, Byelorussians & Ukrainians. Today only some 0.6% of the people are of German ethnicity

And its German heritage, the churches, great houses and villages, in the landscape for 700 years, crumble to dust. Such is the stuff of history.

In the former German village of Mulden, now Russian Perelavo, the Lutheran village church stands abandoned & derelict - how very sad.

The former home of a Prussian landowner has no name.

There must be a deep wound in the German soul - to have lost so much.

But as I browse the thousands of pics on Google Earth I am suddenly presented with the grief of and for the common soldier - the tools of politician's weird Messianic visions.

The German army fought like lions to hold Konigsberg, to allow the evacuation of its women & children. In so doing it suffered horrendous casualties.

In a wood some miles south of Kaliningrad city, close to a ruined castle, there are these two crosses, with very German wreaths. On one is a rusting German helmet. Both crosses are new, made from a length of silver birch. There appear to be name tags. Who are these guys? Is it one of the mass graveyards ploughed over on Stalin's orders after 1945 or just a couple of guys who died for their mates & their country? Dunno.

But they are remembered. By grieving family? Or by ethnic Germans, some of the 0.6% honouring their country's dead? Or treasure seeking Russians?

I found this a deeply moving image.

Millom & district men in South Africa

2010-11-26T00:33:00.003Z

For some reason Millom and district has a number of memorials to those who died in the Boer War. Why I wonder? It is a small town but it did have a huge iron mining & smelting industry in the 19th century and as a consequence of this and its relative isolation, a strong sense of community. Some 37 men from the district fought in South Africa & 9 died. Three of these have individual memorials at Whitbeck, Haverigg & Millom Holy Trinity.

However, the most impressive is that which stands outside the east end of St George's church in the town upon which are listed all nine fatalities.

The cross was unveiled on a sunny summer day in 1904. In so many ways these Boer War memorials set a precedent for 1918; the form, the elevation of the common man & the 'elevated rhetoric', a language of service & death, was soon to be ubiquitous.

The long talked of memorial erected in St.George’s Churchyard from a design of Mr. W. (sic) Collingwood of Coniston, andsupplied by Mr. Miles, sculptor, Ulverston, at an estimated cost of £300, wasunveiled this afternoon at 2 o’clock by Colonel Bain M.P. for this division.....

Well, ladies and gentlemen, we who live in thiscounty of Cumberland, and especially we who reside in this immediateneighbourhood, are proud – naturally proud – to do honour to those brave me whodid their duty, and there is something more than that. We appreciate, weadmire, their brave deeds, their patriotic devotion, but what they did, givingtheir lives, will live after them. It will be a memory, it will be an exampleand an incentive to those who come after them, when the occasion arise, to dotheir duty as these brave men did..

An interested spectator at the unveiling ceremonyto-day was Mr. Richard Hodge, aged 74 years, and late seaman on the“Agamemnon.” He had the distinction of wearing four medals, two for service inthe Crimea, including Sebastopol, one for Abyssinia, and one for good conductand long service, covering over 21 years. He is the father-in-law ofSergt.-Inst. Jones, of the local Volunteer Corps, and for a man of his years isremarkably well preserved and vigorous.

For the rest of the memorials, two are of men who fought in the same unit, at the same action.

At Haverigg church a large marble plaque commemorates John Park of Hemplands who was wounded at Faber Spruit on May 30th 1900 and died the following day.

At Whitbeck, below, some miles to the north of Millom, a very similar plaque describes John Crayston of Monk Foss who was killed in the same action and fighting with the same unit, The Westmorland & Cumberland Yeomanry.

Faber Spruit was a bit of a sideshow and the casualties largely a consequence of the tactical incompetence of the column's CO, General Sir Charles Warren.

As the main British offensive neared the Transvaal capital ofPretoria, other forces, 'colonial' and ImperialYeomanry, pursued Boer forces inthe northern and western Cape Colony. One of these columns halted on the evening of May 30 to wait for supplies at Faber's Put. The choice wasnot a good one, as a number of ridges within rifle range overlooked thefarm buildings.

That evening, 600 Boers surrounded the position and a partycrept past the British outposts. At dawn the Boers poured fire into the mounted infantry lines, killingmen and scattering scores of horses. In the Canadian lines, next to theBritish, the gun detachments ran to their guns while thedrivers harnessed the horses and led them to safety. It was still toodark to aim the guns, so the gunners lay prone beside them.

As the sun rose, a British unit recruited in South Africacounter-attacked, while the Yeomanry engaged the Boers at close range.Two Canadian nine-member gun teams manhandled two guns across afire-swept field and brought them into action, losing one man killed andseven wounded in the process. The combination of the counter-attack andthe artillery fire was too much for the Boers, who abandoned thebattle. Although Warren claimed victory, down-playing the 27 killed, 41 wounded and the loss of a large numberof horses, the engagement was, in fact, a defeat.

The third memorial is in Holy Trinity, Millom's ancient parish church that stands next to Millom Castle, the one-time seat of the Huddlestones. I think the plaque has been re-located here from Kirksanton, a small community near to Whitbeck that lost its church some years ago.

The plaque commemorates George Mason Park of the Royal Lancaster Regiment who was killed on Spion Kop. See here for a comprehensive description of the battle and its consequences. It was a bloody affair that left 1500 casualties including some 243 dead. In terms of the Great War an insignificant number but devastating in 1900.

The dead were buried in the trenches where they had fallen in such numbers.

The action at Spion Kop was largely fought by men of the north & its memory is kept alive at a number of football grounds that have stands named after it, most famously, perhaps, at Liverpool FC's ground.

Mary Kynaston Watts Jones @ Winster & Beatrix Potter

2010-11-24T00:43:00.002Z

The first post I put on this blog a few years ago (!!) described the memorial at Winster, probably my favourite in south Cumbria. In spring the beautiful red sandstone cross stands in a carpet of wild daffodils. Stunning! Orginally it was much taller - how imposing it must have been - though it still is.

Unusually it is signed, by Mary Kynaston Watts-Jones (nee Potter) - her grave stands immediately behind her creation.

Known in the family as 'Dot' due to her diminutive size she died in 1951 aged 73 at Bannon Hey, Windermere. In 1903 she married her first cousin, Hector Lloyd Watts-Jones, a Captain in the Royal Navy (died Jan 1933 aged 61). She is further described on her gravestone as the daughter of Edmund Potter.

One day when I was in the churchyard a local lady informed me that she was a relation of Beatrix Potter and I questioned what the relationship was, but she did not know. However, a family tree that has appeared online clarifies the position. Mary K was the daughter of Edmund Potter who was first cousin to Rupert Potter, Beatrix's father. So Mary K & B are second cousins. The Watts-Jones, Kynastons & Potters were all engaged in the Lancashire cotton industry in some manner and which made the family fortunes.

So there we have it ...

Mary was a sculptress & miniaturist, though I find no reference to her online or anywhere else easily accessible. However, an email correspondent sent me the following pic out of the Illustrated London News of July 19 1919.

I am unaware of whether this memorial was actually erected somewhere or whether Mary K W-J has any other memorials in the country.

I imagine she was called upon to design the Winster cross because she was living within the parish during the Great War, at Bowfell and she was a woman of some status -- well connected! Her grandfather & her husband's grandfather were both MPs and industrialists so she will have been well acquainted with the Holt & Higgin-Birkett families, both of whose son's names appear on the memorial and who will in turn have had some say within the community as men of property & influence. But that is not to detract from her evident skills as a designer and artist.

A hazardous operation

2010-11-21T22:32:00.005Z

This blog owes a great deal to Mr Andy Moss; as I have researched memorials he has researched the names - at astonishing length! Some of the stories he has come up with are extraordinary.

I have barely covered Barrow memorials in either my researches or in this blog - a fact that I regret. But the probable numbers of them and the fact that all the churches and chapels in the town are locked makes the task rather daunting.

There are hundreds of names on Barrow's war memorials, specifically that in Barrow Park, the towns primary place of commemoration.

One name has a remarkable tale attached; that of Flying Officer (navigator) Alfred John Baythorp, RAFVR, who died on July 14, 1944 while flying aboard RCAF Handley Page Halifax JN 888 of 624 (Tiger) squadron out of Blida, North Africa. The aircaraft crashed high in the Pyrenees, above the town of Nistos, while engaged in the dropping of supplies to the French Resistance.

624 was a special squadron that conductedclandestine operations over France, Yugoslavia, and other occupied countries in Europe. From its base in northern Algeria, it utilised the longrange and large load capacity of the Halifax to drop weapons, ammunition,radios, supplies and agents to local resistance units. Thedetails of flights by other crews provide further hints about the nature of theoperations:

"Not successful–incorrect reception at Panane;" "Notsuccessful–no recognition at Diddle...;" "Successful atAccorduer–stores dropped; reception doused at other targets; nickels (leaflets)dropped;" and at Taille Crayon "Successful–15 agents and stores dropped."

Halifax JN 888 was piloted by PO Leslie Arthur Peers of Chatham, Ontario a married man of 27 and father of a young son. To fulfill their missions Peers had to fly at very low level and on the night of July 14, 1944 was flying over the peaks and forests of the Pyrenees peparing to drop supplies to a group of Maquis.

Let the Mayor of Nistos tell the story ...(left click mouse)

The men were buried in a clearing close to the crash site and after the war the CWGC decided that the bodies were too inaccessible to be recovered so they were left where they lay, on beds of French bracken. In 1994 the Canadians and the French built a permanent memorial garden which is maintained by local people who continue to have a great reverence for the men, who died for The Liberty of France.

Apart from Baythorp & Peers the other crew were as follows:

BROOKE, Sergeant JACK, 1451393. 624 Sqdn. Royal Air ForceVolunteer Reserve. 14th July, 1944. The Runnymede Memorial.

CLARKE, Sergeant HARRY, 1592499. 624 Sqdn. Royal Air ForceVolunteer Reserve. 14th July, 1944. Age 22. Son of Harry and Elsie Clarke, ofSheffield. The Runnymede Memorial.

GOBLE, Sergeant CHARLES SPENCER, 145381. 624 Sqdn. RoyalAir Force Volunteer Reserve. 14th July, 1944. Age 21. Son of David and ClariceAlma Goble, of Portsmouth. The Runnymede Memorial.

WALSH, Sergeant JAMES EDWARD, 1652695. 624 Sqdn. Royal AirForce Volunteer Reserve. 14th July, 1944. Son of John and Ann Walsh; husband ofElsie May Walsh, of Grange, Cardiff. The Runnymede Memorial.

WHARMBY, Sergeant WILLIAM RONALD, 1248157. 624 Sqdn. RoyalAir Force Volunteer Reserve. 14th July, 1944. Age 23. Son of William andFlorence Wharmby; husband of Jessie Elizabeth Wharmby, of Bulwell,Nottinghamshire. The Runnymede Memorial.

The crew of RCAF Halifax JN 888.

Ireleth & Askam St Peter's

2010-11-20T23:31:00.007Z

Grace recently asked for a pic of the memorial inside St Peter's parish church, Ireleth ... Here it is ...

Askam & Ireleth war memorial committee's initial proposals, were wildly over ambitious at a time of financial restraint (!sounds familiar!). Eventually the trustees, probably through the offices of theReverend Ridley, approached Mowbray and Company of London, an established firm of churchfurnishers, requesting a design for a memorial plaque. This was produced anddisplayed in the window of Askam co-operative society’s shop in Duke Street throughthe course of September 1920. On October 4, a special parish vestry meeting was called todiscuss the sanctioning ‘or otherwise’ of a faculty for the placing of the plaque onthe south wall of the nave of St Peter’s parish church. In chairing the meetingthe vicar noted that both the design and the suggested location of the memorialhad ‘the sanction and support’ of the relatives of the named dead. Theproposal for the faculty was unanimously accepted.

The memorial of cast bronze mounted on a pale cream marble slabwas installed in the church by John Baxter Riley of Sea-View, Ireleth;undertaker, sexton, monumental mason, joiner and parish clerk. Theplaque was formally unveiled on Sunday, March 19, 1921 by Captain J. M. Challinor, M.C., of ‘Nether Close’, Ireleth. It cost something in excess of £150 of which £101.14s had been raised by publicsubscription up to that time. Challinor was the son in law of Henry Mellon, chair of the war memorial committee.

Captain Johnson McMillan (Jack) Challinor was the son of Sam Challinor, the village doctor in the late 1800s. He had won the Military Cross serving with the King's Own Scottish Borderers at Hill 60 in 1915.

He wasawarded the Military Cross for his actions during the Battle of St Julienon the 5th May, when the Battalion, part of a sorely depleted 13th InfantryBrigade, was ordered to retake a section of Hill 60 that had been retaken bythe Germans. Two companies, 'C' and 'D' led the assault, but heavy fireforced them to retire to the trenches from which their attacks had beenlaunched. However 2 platoons under the command of LieutenantChallinor managed to gain a somewhat tenuous position, and stuck it outuntil only the officer and 3 men were left. This party only withdrew whenthe flanking forces were ordered to retire. He was promoted to Captain inMay.

He and his wife, Hilda, lost their son, Neil, to meningitis at new year 1919/20 when the boy was only 6 months old. He himself died in 1928 of heart failure, aged 41, and was buried in St Peter's churchyard.

Lost memorial - Rampside

2010-10-29T23:14:00.006+01:00

I was recently trawling through the archives, looking at old newspapers. After 1918 there are almost daily entries about war memorials; meetings, fund raising, proposals and unveilings. One very short article I came across was so very poignant.

Captain Birnie was Edward D'Arcy Birnie son of Isabella and Robert Birnie of Sycamore Terrace, High Harrington, Cumberland. He died of wounds aged 26 on March 22, 1918 while serving with the 8th Bn Border Regiment. Before being commissioned in November 1915 he served as sergeant, 845, with the 5th Borders. He was in France from October 26 1914.

His father, Robert, a Scot, was a Head Gamekeeper who in 1901 was living at Winscales, the community largely obliterated by the Nuclear Industry.

Edward was clearly a fine young officer ...

On December 8 1916 the London Gazette carried a notice of the award of the Military Cross to Temp- 2nd Lt E D'A Birnie, Borders ..

For conspicuous gallantry in action. He led a successful bombing attack against an enemy strong point, himself killing at least 8 of the enemy.

Again, on July 23 1918, the London Gazette carried the report of the young acting-Captain's award of the Distinguished Service Order ...

For conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty. When hard pressed by the enemy he led several counter attacks against their bombing parties, and for hours kept large forces of the enemy at bay. At one time he took up a position on the parapet,and (being a marksman) accounted for many of them with a rifle. Finally, when his position became untenable, he successfully withdrew his men. He displayed exceptional skill and courage in face of great odds.

So upon his death he got a memorial gate light from his young fiance, at Rampside, an isolated church above The Bay on the coast road outside Barrow in Furness.

Who was Miss Pollitt? There was a Pollitt family living at 85 Rampside in 1901.

Thomas, the head of the family, was a Hatter, Hosier and Gents outfitter. Although there is no young girl with a name starting 'M' living with the family at the time there is a Margaret Henrietta, born Barrow in 1894, staying with her Grandparents in Ulverston. Perhaps this is her.

Sadly there is no sign now of a gate light in the churchyard at Rampside today. And no doubt Miss Pollitt is herself long dead - as is the memory of her love of a young officer. But this post remembers it.

The Shap road - Skelsmergh

2010-10-29T21:18:00.001+01:00

An iconic place in the the North is Shap, the old A6 that runs over the high fells between Kendal and Penrith. In former days, prior to the construction of the M6, it was the only western route up Britain often packed with vehicles nose to tail. In winter the road was regularly blocked with snow drifts, sometimes for days at a time. Lorry drivers and any others caught had to sleep in isolated farm houses or at the once legendary ' Jungle Caf', now merely a caravan retailers.

Coming south off Shap, a couple of miles north of Kendal, a church appears on a slight prominence. This is St John the Baptist, Skelsmergh, a chapel of 1869/71, built on an earlier site and close to a Holy well.

The entrance to the church is through an elegant lych gate - designed by John Flavel Curwen??

It has an Art-Deco feel about it.

The rafters bears an inscription, 'Gate of Remembrance', that betrays its purpose as the primary parish memorial of the Great War.

Inside the church itself is one of the Oak Crosses that it seems were given to the parishes of his Westmorland constituency in 1916 by Colonel Weston JP, MP of Enyeat. Like at Crosthwaite and elsewhere it was placed in the churchyard as the wartime memorial, where families might nail a brass plaque with service details and date of death of their men and boys.

The central brass bears a dedicatory inscription ...

Forget us not O land for which we fell

May it go well with England - Still go well

Keep Her bright banners without blot or stain

Lest we should dream that we had died in vain

The repousse copper plaque to the left carries Binyon's elegiac words,

They shall not grow old

As we that are left grow old ....

It is perhaps the 2nd World War Memorial.

Google Earth image of High Hesket

2010-10-29T19:39:00.001+01:00

It is quite productive in terms of War Memorials to take a tour of Cumbrian villages via Google Earth, quite a number are plain to see. A typical image is that of the church and memorial at High Hesket on the old road between Carlisle & Penrith.

The chancel arch of the chapel is apparently of 12th/13th century date but the main body is probably 16th century. Many corpses were interred here following an outbreak of plague about 1530 and a chapel was erected or enlarged about the grave pits. What is seen now is largely Victorian.

The sundial bears a wonderful inscription, download image for a clear view;

The memorial is an example of the work of Beatties of Carlisle, a prolific provider in the north of the county. Note the signature sculpture of military items on the base ..

It bears the names 'In Proud and Affectionate Memory ...' of both Great War & Second War dead.

'They Rest From Their Labours'

Sadly the church was locked when I was passing but there is probably a roll inside.

A matter of status at Barbon.

2010-09-30T01:44:00.011+01:00

I have made the point in other postings that many memorials of the Great War and earlier were unequivocal statements of status. In the post war years the class divide in the shires of England was still pretty rigid. There was a degree of social mobility, through education, plain hard graft or through marriage but most people still lived and died as they were born. At Barbon there are three memorials that stand as examples of this social divide and the ways in which families bridged it. Each make very different statements about 'their man'.

St Bartholomew's church lies at the the western end of lonely Barbondale, which itself leads to Dentdale and on into The Yorkshire Dales. It is a beautiful church of 1893, the best of Paley & Austin and always closely associated with the Kay-Shuttleworth family who had a house close by.

Inside are a number of windows, all except one (by Powell) being the work of Shrigley & Hunt of Lancaster. One of these is a memorial to Claude Gifford Jeffery, Captain, 2nd Bn Princess of Wales Own Yorkshire Rgt, killed on 24 October 1914 aged 34.

Jeffery was a regular soldier, he had joined the army in 1901 and served throughout the South African War. His unit landed at Zeebrugge on the 6th October 1914 as part of the BEF, the contemptible little army that Britain put into the field at the outbreak of war.On the 22 October he was wounded in the groin leading an attack near Becelaire, Belgium and died in hospital two days later. See here for more details.

The window was provided by his wife Nellie, nee Anketell-Jones, of Coldingham, Winchfield, Hants whom Claude had only married in the early months of 1914. It depicts two allegorical classical figures; of Fortitude with spear and shield surrounded by oak leaves, & Pax bearing a lamb beneath a canopy of laurel. Above are the figures of the crucified Christ and a Madonna and child, perhaps in reality Nellie holding her and Claude's baby daughter. Captain Jeffery was of a middle class professional family, 'the middling sorts', as academics describe them. His father, Herbert, was a Bradford solicitor and public notary. His wife's family were probably minor Irish gentry.

The window is unpretentious and, lacking armorial or Latin inscription, it does not exclude the commonality. It is a simple statement describing the virtue of the man and sentiments of loss. Its middling status is in its existence; such windows did not come cheap. Only those having some wealth could afford even a relatively small window such as this. I don't know why it is here at Barbon.

The second memorial is altogether different. In the churchyard, to the east of the church there is an enclosed garden/cemetery plot. This is the private burial ground of the Kay-Shuttleworth family. See here for their full story. The Kays were a family of no great note but in 1842 James Kay, a self made Rochdale man, married Lady Janet Shuttleworth of Gawthorpe, sole heiress of an ancient Lancashire family. James assumed his wife's name and arms. Through ambition, hard work and astute mating he was now an elite.

Within this patch of ground are a considerable number of memorials and gravestones commemorating members of the extended family. At its centre is a stone cross.

Around the side of the pedestal on which it stands are carved the names of Captain the Hon. Lawrence Ughtred Kay-Shuttleworth, 'D' Battery, 11 Brigade, RFA and Temp Captain the Hon. Edward James Kay-Shuttleworth, Rifle Brigade. Lawrence married Selina Adine Bridgeman, grandaughter of the 4th Earl of Bradford and was killed near Vimy on 30 March 1917. Edward - Eton & Balliol - married Sibell Eleanor Maud, daughter of Chas RW Adeane of Babraham Hall, Cambs, a family related by marriage to many of the higher nobility. He died at home and was buried here at Barbon. Both men were Barristers.

The memorial is quite subdued but there was no requirement for ostentation. The family effectively owned the village, their status was taken for granted and well understood. Even so the cross has its Latin, speaking only to the educated, and its position in an extensive and private family plot proclaims the exclusivity of the named dead.

Third and last is an aspirational brass plaque erected in memory of Thomas Arthur Airey. A difficult memorial to photograph even with Rod's camera!

At the top, within a border of laurel, is the cap badge of 1/14 London Regiment, London Scottish. Beneath this is the inscription;

In Loving Memory Of
T. Arthur Airey, aged 21 Years
Exhibitioner of Christ's College, Cambridge
Serving with the 1st Batt London Scottish
Killed in Action at Gommecourt July 1st 1916
Only son of Thomas and Fanny Airey of Moorthwaite, Barbon

                                          Nothing but well and fair
          And what may comfort us in a death so noble
                                                                     Milton

Mea Gloria Fides

Young Thomas Airey died in the mass slaughter of the 'diversionary attack' at Gommecourt on the First Day of The Somme. He has no known grave.

When I first discovered this memorial I read it, took notes and moved on thinking sad thoughts about this young Officer. Only later did it dawn on me that there is no mention of rank. Thomas Arthur was in fact a private soldier but the memorial with its quote from Milton, use of Latin - My glory assured - and description of scholastic achievement is that of an educated elite, an Officer. It excluded the uneducated commonality.

Thomas senior was a farmer and grain merchant. Moorthwaite is a comfortable but modestly unpretentious Edwardian family house on the edge of the village. His grandfather, however, was simply a hill farmer. The family had, through hard work, risen in the world, they had become middling sorts. Young Thomas attended Kirby Lonsdale Grammar School, where his name is on the War Memorial, and there obtained a scholarship to Cambridge. Had he survived he may have joined the Shuttleworths as a Barrister, married into the gentry or lesser nobility and have thus achieved elite status. His memorial, clearly thought thro' by proud and devastated parents, retrospectively looked forward to this.

For the rest of Barbon there is also a marble plaque in the church but I lack a decent photo of it. In the centre of the village a cross, designed by Paley, has a wonderful and uncompromising dedication!

The cross was unveiled on October 1, 1921.

Quaker War Memorial from Wigton!

2010-09-19T00:20:00.005+01:00

I guess the idea of a Quaker war memorial seems a bit odd - but two have turned up and one, a chair, has come to a temporary rest at Swarthmoor Hall while a permanent home is found.

The memorials were at Brookfield School, Wigton, a Quaker school founded in 1815. The premises were originally at Highmoor and moved to Brookfield in 1827. The school closed in 1984 and passed out of Quaker hands. It was presumably at this time that the memorials were removed, I believe, to Wigton Meeting House.

The chair bears a plaque naming the old boys of Brookfield School who died between 1939 - 45.

The men named:

Rowland S Armstrong is named on the CWGC website as Roland Scott Armstrong, son of George Lee & Margaret of Carlisle. He was posted 'missing believed killed' aged 22 as an Acting Sub Lt RNVR, 854 Squadron, Fleet Air Arm, flying Avenger IIs on January 29, 1945 while serving aboard the aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious. The carrier was part of Force 63 making a raid on Soengi Gerong oil refineries near Palembang. Casualties were incurred by stray anti aircraft shells fired by HMS Euryalus which was engaging Japanese Kamikaze attacks. 11 were killed and 22 wounded. Was Rowland one of these or was he killed while flying?

Edward Coward is probably Edward Mason Coward, First Radio Officer, Merchant Marine. The only man of this name on the CWGC Register died serving aboard the SS Traveller of Liverpool on January 26, 1942 aged 20. She was torpedoed by U106 in the North Atlantic with the loss of 50 lives.

113798 Selby Greenop, Flight Lt, RAFVR, son of Harold & Janet Greenop of Carlisle. Selby was killed on November 7, 1944 in one of the many forgotten tragedies of the war when Landing Ship Tank 420 carrying No 1 Base Signals & Radar Unit to France hit a mine off Oostende. 14 Officers & 224 other ranks were lost; just 31 men survived. The unit was wiped out. Selby is buried at Oostende New War Cemetery. LST 427 is seen below, they carried huge amounts but sank like stones.

Leutenant Stanley Learmouth Haydock, RN, died aboard the Portsmouth destroyer HMS Acasta on June 8, 1940 aged 25. He was the son of Hugh & Isabel Haydock of Upminster. The Acasta was lost off Norway while sailing with HMS Glorious, see here for a posting about the terrible events of that day.

23 year old Flying Officer Gordon Noble Leach, RAFVR, was piloting Stirling LK 502 on a night photo training mission from RAF Wigsley on May 27, 1944. The plane developed Engine trouble and crashed at Cliffe Park, Rudyard, Leek, Staffs. Four crew were killed, four survived. Gordon was the son of James and Janet Noble Leach of Newcastle on Tyne. He was cremated at Newcastle Crematorium. This is the crash site.

927407 John Watson Leathes, aged 31, served in India as a Serjeant with 51 Battery, 69 Field Regiment, Royal Artillery. He died of unknown cause on November 1, 1944 and is now buried at Kirkee War Cemetery, nr Poona.

George Robertson & David Smith must, for the present, remain anonymous. Their names are too common to be easily identified.

Many Quakers struggled with their consciences at the outbreak of WW2. Though committed to pacifism Hitler was sufficiently bad news for some to put this principal to one side. Others did not. There is no way that I can easily ascertain how many of the men were Friends and how many simply attended the school as non Quakers.

I have just had the following email:

The chair was made by Stanley W Davies (see Wikipedia) for the Old Scholars Association of the Friends' School Wigton shortly after the war. I was a younger pupil at the same time as some of people commemorated.George S Robertson was a pupil from 7/1934 to 12/1939 and served in the RAF. He was the elder son of Robertsons who were the foremost bakery firm in Carlisle. David Smith is recorded in the School history as coming from Low Fell. He was a pupil from 5/1933 to 7/1937. Unfortunately I do not have any information about which service he was in. I hope this may be of some use in identifying them.

There is a WW1 memorial in the form of an oak plaque presently in the Meeting House at Wigton. The building is shortly to be sold and the plaque will be removed to Ackworth School.

As a consequence of receiving this email Robertson can now be identified as 1821069 Sergeant (Air Gunner) George Smith Robertson RAF Volunteer Reserve, 106 Squadron. A Lancaster in the Squadron's markings is seen here.

Robertson was killed on 31st March 1944 in the great raid on Nuremberg.

... This would normally have been the moon stand-down period for the Main Force, but a raid to the distant target of Nuremberg was planned on the basis of an early forecast that there would be protective high cloud on the outward route, when the moon would be up, but that the target area would be clear for ground-marked bombing. A Meteorological Flight Mosquito carried out a reconnaissance and reported that the protective cloud was unlikely to be present and that there could be cloud over the target, but the raid was not cancelled.

795 aircraft were dispatched - 572 Lancasters, 214 Halifaxes and 9 Mosquitos. The German controller ignored all the diversions and assembled his fighters at 2 radio beacons which happened to be astride the route to Nuremberg. The first fighters appeared just before the bombers reached the Belgian border and a fierce battle in the moonlight lasted for the next hour. 82 bombers were lost on the outward route and near the target. The action was much reduced on the return flight, when most of the German fighters had to land, but 95 bombers were lost in all - 64 Lancasters and 31 Halifaxes, 11.9 per cent of the force dispatched. It was the biggest Bomber Command loss of the war.

A death in the Battle of the Atlantic

2010-09-14T00:16:00.005+01:00

It's ridiculous how memorials keep turning up! Recently the church at Lindal in Furness has been opening every Wednesday morning where an excellent exhibition of local history has been displayed, mostly about the many mines that were established around the village in the nineteenth century to win the haematite ore that lay in the local limestone. I took Tez and the Big fella round a couple of weeks ago and another small memorial emerged. We also got an excellent photo of the church's Great War memorial, very difficult to photograph.

This rather heavily gothic lacquered brass plaque lists 20 village men by the year in which they died. It is unsigned.

Below the pulpit there is a further memorial in the shape of a small oak table.

In the centre of the table is a dedicatory plaque ...

In Memory Of

Herbert Harrison

Aged 21

Who Lost His Life In The

Battle Of The Atlantic

8th June 1941

Herbert was the son of Wilfred James & Gertrude Harrison of Lindal. He was serving as Fourth Engineer on the MV (Motor Vessel) Adda, 7186 tons, when the ship was torpedoed at 04.42 hrs about 100 miles SSW of Freetown, Sierra Leone. Adda was dispersed to West Africa from convoy OB 323 en route from Liverpool to the USA.

Seven crew and three passengers were lost, 414 souls saved by HMS Cyclamen.

Adda was the seventeenth of twenty one vessels sunk by the type IX B U 107 sailing out of Lorient while under the command of Gunther Hessler, the son in law of Grand Admiral Doenitz. The patrol in which Adda was lost was the most successful of all U Boat patrols of the war. Hessler was awarded The Knight's Cross.

U107 was eventually sunk in the Bay of Biscay west of La Rochelle on 18 August 1944 by a Sunderland aircraft of 201 Squadron.

Howard Martin has emailed with details of a Cartmel man who was also lost to the U107 - here

East Window, Temple Sowerby, St James

2010-09-11T22:21:00.000+01:00

No postings for weeks!

I have just treated myself to a book - like I really need more books? However, with little effort I persuaded myself that this one was indispensable! The Stained Glass in the Churches of The Anglican Diocese of Carlisle, published in 1994 by CWAAS and written by Leslie N S Smith. I get frustrated when going around churches only to find that there is no information on windows, let alone war memorials. Some are superb examples of the glaziers art, others not quite so good.

Thus when I found myself in Temple Sowerby I was forearmed with the knowledge that the great East Window, a memorial to the men who died in the Great War, was designed GP Hutchinson and made by Powell of Whitefriars, London. It bears their signature, a small representation of a cowled monk.

Gerald P Hutchinson (b1866) was the son of a clergyman, who was also a master at Rugby School. Gerald joined J Powell & son in 1889 on the manufacturing side. Although he described himself as 'an artist in Stained Glass' on the 1901 census and did indeed design windows he also took on a managerial role and by 1920 was a director. Most of his designs for the firm date from the earlier part of his career and into the 1930s. They are not highly rated by those who make such judgments.

This one seems reasonable. Reminds me of the William Morris window at Allithwaite of which I have no digital pic!

A mystery of the Sequoiadendron giganteums or Wellingtonia trees of Temple Sowerby

2010-09-01T22:37:00.001+01:00

I was watching TV a few weeks ago, one of the many second rate reality shows that wastes hours, time & energy. This one featured a young dentist with a lot of dosh looking for a house somewhere round the Lakes. He finally put an offer on an impressive Victorian mansion at Temple Sowerby, a delightful village at the west end of the Stainmore road approaching Penrith. I was reminded of a trip out a few weeks earlier when I had traced most of the memorials in the same village. During this trip I was lucky enough to meet a local farmer and his wife who were happy to fill in some details. At one point we stood by her front gate and she pointed to a house by the main road, the same that appeared on the TV programme, and pointed out a huge tree in its garden, soaring above all the others around it.

Apparently this tree, a Wellingtonia or more properly the North American Giant Redwood - Sequoiadendron giganteum - is one of four that were planted in a long line running north-south across the village. The best seen is that which stands at the entrance to Acorn Bank, a National Trust property standing some way north of the village.

A War memorial? Don't know, but the lady I spoke to said that the trees were planted to celebrate the Battle of Waterloo. The tree's seeds were first cultivated in Britain in 1853, Waterloo was in 1815. Maybe they were planted to commemorate Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington after whom the tree was named in Britain and who died in 1852.

Maybe somebody out there knows the full story.

A Hero of the Confederacy

2010-08-20T21:27:00.004+01:00

Just borrowed a book from the library 'The Stained Glass in the Churches of the Anglican Diocese of Carlisle', by Leslie Smith. I've bought a copy too, at a reasonable price from ABE Books, but it's not arrived yet! When I get books like this it's quite frustrating because I realise how many memorials I have missed - although there are one or two the book has missed!! I did it again this last week when visiting St Cuthbert's church, Cliburn - which prompted a return visit today.

What a lovely little church with the modern wayside cross on an ancient base.

The book tells me that there is a small stained glass window in the north wall of the sanctuary. It has two small flags in front of it, one an odd stars and stripes - confederate? - and the other listing the names of a series of battles from the American Civil War...

In the book the window is described as having 'Florets in gold, fleur de lys of the same, a Coat of Arms & Motto...'. Though unsigned and undated it is listed in the catalogue of Cox & Sons of London, later to be Curtis, Ward & Hughes.

The window was inserted to the memory of Confederate Major General Patrick Ronayne Cleburne, killed at Franklin fight, November 1864.

The dedication plaque reads:

In Memory

of Major General Cleburne

C.S.A.

Born 17th March 1828

Killed at the Battle of Franklin Fenn

30th November 1864

There is an awful lot about the General on the web - start here or at Wikipedia here! Rising from the ranks he was called the 'Stonewall Jackson of the West' & fought in many of the iconic actions of the American Civil War; Shiloh, Chickamauga, Missionary Ridge, et al. You can even buy computer games and re-fight his battles....

Among the mass of info available on the web across the pond is this picture of his kepi & pistol.

The Wiki page describes him as being Anglo Irish, born in County Cork but the family lived in Cliburn and the Eden Valley for some four centuries. There are a number of other Cleburne memorials in the church including an undated armorial window with figures of Christ & the Magdalene and another to Cuthbert Lowther Cleburne, died 1870 as an infant in the USA. And just across the lane outside the church there are the much denuded remains of Cliburn Hall, the family home from the 14th century, seen here as it was in the 19th century

There is a further American Cleburne memorial brass attached to the font cover ...

The church is fascinating; there is a cut-down Roman altar built into the porch and the south door is clearly very early. These ancient doors are often in evidence in the north of Cumbria and I often wonder whether they are pillaged from one of the many Roman buildings that must have littered the landscape in the 10th & 11th centuries.

A Cumbrian Soldier

2010-08-16T00:00:00.003+01:00

Sapper Darren Foster of Carlisle. 21 Engineer Regiment.

Died of gunshot wounds in the Sangin District of Helmand, Afghanistan, 14 August 2010.

Corporal John Rutter, Section Commander, 73 Armoured Engineer Squadron, said:

"Sapper 'Cookie' Foster was a Sapper through and through; although new to the Squadron he possessed the qualities and capabilities of a soldier beyond his years.
"He gained the name 'Cookie' by making the mistake of telling the section that cooking was a passion of his and was duly appointed head Engineer Chef, however this was not the only reason why he shone within the Section, it was his hardworking and enthusiastic approach to work, accompanied with his friendly personality that made him the sapper he was.

"As an intelligent and skilled sapper he fitted in with the section from the start and was liked by all. We only had the privilege of knowing 'Cookie' since he deployed and joined us at Forward Operating Base Sangin Fulod, but within that time he has made a lasting impression on us all that we will never forget...

"Rest in Peace mate."

Finsthwaite Tower

2010-07-27T00:53:00.005+01:00

Up above Finsthwaite, on the opposite side of Lake Windermere from Fell Foot and the tides of tourists heading up towards Bowness there is a tower on a hill. Now obscured by trees it was once visible for miles around.

Originally of three storeys it was built in c1799 by James King of Finsthwaite as a memorial to the exploits of the Royal Navy.

Interestingly Mannex, in his History & Topography of Westmorland and Lonsdale North of the Sands (1849), suggests that the 'observatory' was in fact built in 1797 and talks of people carving their names in the wooden frame. Was there an earlier, timber tower? Perhaps he talks of the door frame?

There is a dedicatory inscription ...

ERECTED

To the Memory of

The Officers, Seamen and Marines

of the

ROYAL NAVY

whose matchless Conduct and

irresistible Valour decisively defeated

the Fleets of France, Spain and Holland

and preserved and protected

LIBERTY and COMMERCE

1799

In 1798/9 things did not look good. Britain was deeply involved in the wars with Revolutionary France which appeared to carry all before it. Ireland was aflame and receiving French support, and British India was threatened by Tippoo Sultan, The Tiger of Mysore. In the previous year Napoleon had taken Malta and set about conquering Egypt with the intention of marching on to India to join up with Tippoo and then jointly booting the Brits out of the sub continent.

However, the best laid plans of Old Boney came to naught courtesy of Nelson who obliterated the French Fleet at Aboukir Bay in the Battle of the Nile, Egypt on August 1, 1798. In October of the previous year Admiral Duncan had defeated the Dutch Fleet, then allied with the French, at Camperdown.

James King was clearly impressed by the Navy's achievements. He did, however, have a personal interest. His father's marriage bond of 1751 describes him as aged 35 and 'lately surgeon on HM Ship Loo'. James senior was a Liverpool man but married Isabel Taylor of Finsthwaite (1722-66). James junior was born in 1755 and eventually inherited Finsthwaite House from his mother's younger brother, Edward (1731-90). James continued to live there until his death in June,1821, an old bachelor.

There was no such ship in the Royal as an HMS Loo but there have been a number named HMS Looe.

32-gun fifth rate launched in 1696 and wrecked in 1697.
32-gun fifth rate launched in 1697 and wrecked in 1705.
42-gun fifth rate launched in 1707. She was reduced to harbour service in 1735 and was sunk as a breakwater in 1737.
44-gun fifth rate launched in 1741 and wrecked in 1744.
44-gun fifth rate launched in 1745 and sunk as a breakwater in 1759.
30-gun fifth rate, formerly the privateer Liverpool. She was purchased in 1759 and sold in 1763.

The ship wrecked in 1744 lies off the coast of Florida and is a popular diving site. It had a dramatic end. Indeed its undoubted fame was probably the prompt for the ship's inclusion in James senior's marriage bond. But that cannot be a certain conclusion without further research at the Royal Naval Museum archives.

Thanks to Janet Martin for the pics and info

Afghanistan

2010-07-27T00:29:00.012+01:00

The Taleban are, I think, a fearsome foe for western armies. They are totally motivated and quite ruthless; they will not tolerate foreign forces on their soil. But it has been so for generations. Their fathers and grandfathers fought the British to a standstill for more than a hundred years, then the Russians and now the Americans who, courtesy of Butcher Blair, dragged us back into the present, Fifth Afghan War. Thus far they have always won ... and following the revelations on Wikileaks it seems they may well continue to do so. Throughout this whole miserable business the tribesmen of this extraordinary country have inflicted grievous casualties.

Perhaps the Afghan's greatest success was in utterly defeating the British forces under General Elphinstone in the First Afghan War of 1839 - 42. The Brits, fearful of Russian influence, decided to impose a friendly and malleable figurehead on the country and proceeded to replace the popular Dost Mohammed with their own dissolute and corrupt puppet, Shuja Shah. Realising that Shah would never survive alone, 10,000 troops were dispatched to support his regime and local warlords were bribed to keep their peace. It didn't last. In the Autumn of 1842 the Afghans rose up, besieged the Kabul cantonment and threw the Brits out. In the subsequent withdrawal through the snow of the Jugdulluk & Khyber passes some 16,000 British and Indian troops and their camp followers were massacred.

If you are ambushed here in the passes, as the Brits were, there is nowhere to run. What a place to die.

Of all those who left Kabul Dr William Bryden was the only man to ride into safety at Jalalabad. This famous painting by Lady Butler provides a fanciful impression of his salvation.

Of the many who died one at least is commemorated in Cumbria, at Wreay, near Penrith, where stands, surely, the most extraordinary church in the County, a fantasy of styles drawn from across Europe.

The church which replaced an earlier structure was designed and built by Sarah Losh, (1785 - 1853), the daughter & heiress of a local landowner, drawing on architectural features that she had encountered whilst on a 'Grand Tour' with her sister, Catherine, about 1817. The basic form is that of a classical Roman Basilica. All the work was done by estate servants; the wood carving in particular is spectacular with its angels, birds and animals. Sarah never married but she was clearly a woman education and taste.

Looking again at the photograph of the nave there are two carved pine cones, symbolic of eternal life, at the edge of the pic. Others can be found elsewhere in the church. The choice is deliberate, for in the corner of the graveyard is an enclosure containing the burials of the Losh family and their friends and other memorials concentrated here from the cleared graveyard. Among these is another large pine cone and an inscribed block of stone that originally stood beneath a tree, now long gone. The inscription reads ...

This Kheuat Pine is Planted
in Memory Of W Thain, Major
of the 23rd Ft. It Was Raised
From Seed Transmitted by Him to
Friends. He Perished in The
Fatal Pass of Coord Cabul
...... ..... ..... Lamented by All
Who Knew Him

Thain died in the snow of the Jugdulluk pass. He was a close friend of the Losh family and had fought with a Colonel Elphinstone at Waterloo where he was slightly wounded by grape shot near La Haye Sainte while serving as Adjutant of the 33rd Foot in Halkett's Brigade. Is this the same Elphinstone who led the retreat from Kabul?

Apart from the pine cones Thain's death is also believed to be commemorated by the recurrent symbol of the arrow which is a striking feature of the west door of the church.

The fatalities of the First Afghan War were commemorated in India by the building of the church of St John in Bombay (Mumbai) where the many names - of Officers - are listed. Forgotten men from forgotten wars.

Here is a short film of St John's church today, a relic of Empire.

Calthwaite

2010-07-24T15:33:00.001+01:00

As a consequence of travelling round the county of Cumbria I have acquired a considerable collection of church guides. Written by vicars or local enthusiasts they describe the origins and history of the buildings, windows, artifacts but rarely war memorials. They are seldom valued as objects of craftsmanship. Thus it was rather nice to visit Calthwaite church and discover quite a comprehensive description of the memorial in the church guide.

The church, designed by JH Martindale Diocesan surveyor for Carlisle, was only built in 1913. It is a lovely building, quiet and peaceful and contains some magnificent wood carving done by George Fendley of Warwick Rd, Carlisle.

The war memorial is another example of the work of Beattie of Carlisle.

Close examination provides a glimpse of the way in which the rifle and helmet were drawn out of the Aberdeen granite. The sculptor drilled holes around an outline allowing the detail to be isolated and worked on.

The church guide describes the unveiling ceremony ...

58 Calthwaite men joined the armed forces of whom 12 were killed in action ... The Memorial was unveiled on Sunday afternoon, 16th January 1921, by the Earl of Carlisle, who lived at Calthwaite Hall as a boy and had no doubt known many of the men commemorated. The service, conducted by the recently instituted vicar, The Rev WW Farrer, was short, simple and impressive. ... The congregation sang the hymn 'The Saints of God' and then went outside to gather round the memorial. Lord Carlisle reverently withdrew the Union Jack which covered the inscription, and the vicar and Mr Reece offered dedicatory prayers. Two buglers from Carlisle Castle sounded the Last Post.

Charlie Foster, one of the men commemorated, was the son of the headmaster of Calthwaite School, who recorded his death in the school logbook in October 1917, adding the comment 'No singing today as master not in singing mood'.

Such grief from war. For what?

Return to Clifton - The Last Battle on English Soil

2010-07-21T23:07:00.005+01:00

By far the most popular posting on this blog is that which describes the Battle of Clifton ... The Last Battle on English Soil. I recently found myself driving down the old road and took the opportunity, with my mate Rod, to take some more pictures of Battle memorials in the village.

Herewith is a close-up of the dedication plate on the stone put in place below 'The Rebel Tree' by the Goodchilds in 1936.

There is also a dedicatory plaque placed on the renovated fence and gate by Scots patriots around the millenium.

In Memory of Fellow Scots Who Lie Here in Foreign Soil.
Never Forgotten.
Prosperity to Scotland And No Union.

Siol Nan Gaidheal

On the east side of the A6, just a few yards south of The Rebel Tree, lies an ancient Holy Well, now enclosed and 'made safe' in true Health and Safety fashion. It appears that this too was adopted as a further battle memorial.

It has two plaques built into its fabric.

The allusion in the inscription below to a tree planted in 1995 on the 250th anniversary of the skirmish is confusing. There is no tree anywhere close by so I guess this plaque has been relocated to the well's enclosure from elsewhere.

Skelton

2010-07-08T23:15:00.010+01:00

Sometimes I am truly amazed at the number of memorials that exist in the smallest of communities. Today I had a drive up to the hidden villages lying between the Eden and the hills of Lakeland north west of Penrith; a landscape of gently rolling farmland, leafy lanes and dispersed farming communities. In amongst these is a scatter of wonderful old churches and chapels. Skelton is one such.

The church of St Michael with its 14th century tower lies at the edge of the village. It is approached through a lych gate, itself a memorial commemorating the men of the village who died in the Great War. Shame about the plastic container!

The names of the men are carved on the sandstone base.

A further memorial in the form of a stock graveyard cross can be seen to the left of the church tower interestingly using the dates 1914 - 1918. The names are again inscribed together with the dedication...
'They died in War that we might live in Peace'.

Inside the church are two hand drawn rolls of honour. The earlier one listing all from the village who served and died in the European War was drawn by Irwin Walker in March 1921. He did not serve but being the son of a farm labourer he may have been exempt.

The central detail is beautifully drawn.

The second roll, drawn by RF Allinson in September 1949, lists those from the Second World War and includes seven women, reflecting the totality of the nation's engagement in the conflict where the women's services were so central to the national effort.

At the bottom of the nave, beneath the organ, is an oak screen that appears to have no purpose. Was it originally elsewhere in the village? The central panel lists the dead of 1939-45.

On the north wall of the nave is a spectacular plaque bearing the arms of the Cowper family and dedicated to the life and Great War service of Lt Colonel Malcolm Gordon Cowper. He joined the East Yorkshires from The Buffs as a 22 year old subaltern in 1898 and led the 6th (Service) Battalion thro' all of its battles in Gallipoli, France & Flanders between 1915-18.

The places named here are long forgotten by the vast majority of people but in the post 1918 years they would have been familiar to all, dark names resonant with death and heroism.

To find so many memorials in such a small, quiet community is indicative of the huge emotional impact of the world wars of the twentieth century. It is something I can only imagine, at best emotionally reconstruct from the echoes I felt as a child. I have just been watching the 70th anniversary celebrations of the Battle of Britain on TV and an Air Marshall observed that to young people that conflict is as remote as Trafalgar or Agincourt. Perhaps so, but it is sobering to contemplate the effort that places such as Skelton made to put the memory of Great Events in the ancient continuum of English history.

Deeply moving.

William Morris at Bassenthwaite & a connection with the Battle of Britain

2010-07-04T21:17:00.011+01:00

Don't know where I would be without Rod and his amazing camera; this blog would certainly lack some great images. He seems able to get superb pics in every condition of light, without a tripod. It's an impressive camera though! And this week it came into its own again.

Probably the most common form of memorial to be encountered in the county is the plaque. Sometimes carved wood or more commonly brass or bronze they are everywhere, in chapel, church, school and factory. Many are made by Wippel or Osborne, both companies being major suppliers of church furniture and ornaments since Victorian times. However, communities and individuals occasionally employed slightly more exotic makers, the Keswick School of Industrial Arts or, in the case of one at Bassenthwaite, William Morris.

This beautiful plaque, signed Morris & Co (Westminster) Ltd, commemorates Lieut Henry Rathbone Hele-Shaw RFC, killed in action on the Somme on July 19, 1916....

Henry Hele-Shaw was the only son of Dr Henry & Mrs Ella Hele-Shaw of Westminster, neighbours of Morris & Co. Educated at Marlborough he had just obtained a scholarship to Clare College, Cambridge when war broke out. He joined the Public Schools Brigade and quickly obtained a commission in the RGA and obtained a Royal Aero Club flying certificate number 1728 on September 7, 1915 flying a Maurice Farman Biplane. (His date of death here must be when missing officially became killed)

He joined the Royal Flying Corps in late '15 acting as a ferry pilot before joining 70 squadron where he was very soon wounded. Shortly after rejoining his squadron he got into a scrap while piloting Sopwith 1½ Strutter A386, with 2nd Lt Robert Claude Oakes (formerly Royal Field Artillery) as observer. On the same day Ltn Kurt Wintgens of KEK Vaux claimed a victory over Strutter '9653' near Arras, probably Hele-Shaw. It was Wintgens' 9th of his eventual 19 victories. He was shot down on 25 September 1916.

It seems that young Henry was identified and buried by the Germans in the village of Le Verguier near St. Quentin where his grave was discovered by advancing British troops in April 1917. Post war he was reinterred at Jeancourt Communal Cemetery, near Peronne.

Here is his medal card.

The young man's father, Dr Henry Selby Hele-Shaw, was a high profile figure.

Born in Billericay in 1854, the eldest of thirteen children, he was apprenticed to Rouch & Leaker, Engineers, Bristol, before obtaining a degree at Bristol University. At age 27 he became the University's first Professor of Engineering. In 1885 he took the new chair of Engineering in Liverpool where he met and married Ella Marion Rathbone of the important Liverpool Quaker family. In 1904 he established a college of Engineering in the Transvaal and became Principal. A member of The Royal Society he died at the Cottage Hospital, Ross on Wye in 1941 leaving his wife, who died in 1947, and a daughter.

Henry was also important to the development of the Motor Car, the discovery of Hele-Shaw Flows (??) and the invention the variable pitch propeller, central to the success of British Fighters during the Battle of Britain.

Although Lt Hele Shaw's parents lived in London the memorial is probably here because his mother's family lived at Bassenfell Manor, a significant country house close by. Her sister, Hilda Maria Rathbone, has an extraordinary Arts & Crafts memorial in the church.

It is unsigned but has to be a major designer. Is this also Morris?

Rod sent me the following info; (he seems quite impressed!)

...the Hele-Shaw model is an analogue model modeling fresh water, salt water, oil or gas thro porous media (rocks). It consists of two parallel plates of glass. Separation represents permeability, immiscible fluids of differing viscosity represent the waters etc. It models a vertical slice thro an aquifer. I once, in a former life, built one of these models with a guy from Imperial College. It represented the intrusion of saline estuary water entering the Wirral red sandstone aquifer.

Well!!

See here or here for further info; very technical.

Great Gable

2010-06-13T13:47:00.007+01:00

Pretty impressive place, the Lake District. Had a drive out yesterday to reconnect with the fells after two weeks with my daughter in Pompey; Hampshire is a very different, more gentle landscape. Up here the hills are magnificent. Among the better known is the pyramid of Great Gable at the head of Wasdale.

It really is an impressive lump of rock, owned by the National Trust and a War Memorial!

Every year people make their way to the summit on Remembrance Sunday for a service and to lay crosses and wreaths around a bronze plaque at the summit.

The plaque was designed by William Gershon Collingwood and depicts the hills around Great Gable in relief. It was unveiled on Saturday June 8, 1924 by Dr Wakefield, President of The Fell & Rock Climbing Club of Great Britain to the memory 20 of its members who were killed in the Great War. Great Gable lay at the centre of a huge swathe of central Lakeland that the club had bought and given to the National Trust as a memorial.

It was a typical Cumbrian summer day, thick mist and driving rain but even so some 500 - 600 people were on the summit. The dedication was read by the Quaker, Geoffrey Winthrop Young of Heversham and Cartmel who lost a leg as second in command of a (French) Friend's Ambulance Unit based at Dunkirk. He had been in France from the last day of October 1914. The article in The Times describing the unveiling can be seen below - click to open.

What an amazing view from the summit! If you're looking at this from the US of A, Canada or anywhere else - come and take a look!

Lt John Arnold Archibald, Rusland

2010-06-01T21:12:00.022+01:00

There is an awful loneliness and sadness about war memorials. Names appear that once made a person; someone loved and cared for, with a life of joy and love and sadness. And now, in 2010, they are simply letters etched onto brass, bronze, wood or stone - long forgotten outside of family and if of no family then mere ghosts of men. Thus it is a strange but edifying pursuit to build up a picture around a name, to rebuild the story of a man's life, however incomplete.

Lakeland is largely a land of valleys, some better known than others. One of the lesser known is the Rusland Valley, running up from The Bay towards Grizedale and the southern fells. Some way up is the parish church where are buried Arthur Ransome of Swallows & Amazons fame and also the wife & son of George Romney the 18th century society painter.

The church has three memorials, an illuminated Roll, a kneeler bearing the names of two parish men who died 1914-18 and a brass plaque commemorating Lt John Arnold Archibald, Croix de Guerre, 11th Bn ANZAC.

He appears to have a strange story that I cannot complete but documents on the Australian War Memorial website allow a glimpse of the man.

John Arnold Archibald was born on 24 August 1892 in Taloumbi, New South Wales. In his youth he attended Scotch College, Perth and Claremont Teacher Training College, WA, where he qualified as a teacher. After serving as a 2nd Lt in the Cadet Force he joined the Australian Army as 137, 'G' Company, 11th Bn AIF, on August 24, 1914, his 22nd birthday giving an address at The Railway Hotel, Kilgoorlie where his next of kin & brother, O A Archibald, was also living ... and here it is!

The day after joining he was promoted Corporal and in November Lance Sergeant.

The 11th Battalion embarked for Egypt in December 1914. At Gallipoli it formed part of the 3rd Brigade which was the covering force for the ANZAC landing on 25 April 1915 and so was the first ashore at around 4:30 am. Archibald was shot in the right shoulder on this day and evacuated to Malta. He rejoined his unit at Gallipoli on June 20th. In August the Bn made preparatory attacks at the southern end of the ANZAC position before the battle of Lone Pine and Archibald was commissioned as 2nd Lt.

This extraordinary image available from the Australian online archives shows the trenches at Quinn's Post, Anzac Cove, Gallipoli. John Arnold Archibald is the Officer just visible on the right hand side of the picture. The soldier in the foreground is Cpl HM Longmire & the other man is Cpl HA Goodall.

In April 1916 Archibald returned to Australia with septic poisoning. On 7th August 1916 he embarked at Freemantle for France aboard HMAT Militiades with the 19th reinforcement detachment of the 11th Bn. Around this time a group photo was taken of the unit's Officers. Archibald in 7th from left on the middle row. He was promoted to full Lt on November 21 1916.

The reinforcements were shipped to France to make up for the appalling losses suffered by the Australians at Pozieres on the Somme.

In August 1917 at Ypres Archibald was Mentioned in Anzac Orders - in October he suffered a gunshot wound.

Archibald was again recommended for an award in August 1918 - as a consequence of which he was Mentioned in Despatches.

A final recommendation in September 1918 led to the award of the Croix de Guerre.

Archibald was hospitalised for dysentrey at Gallipoli and wounded on three occasions before receiving 'multiple wounds' on 23rd September 1918. He died the following day. Upon his death he left his estate to his Mother, Clara Amelia Archibald of 99a Freyburg St, Lyall Bay, New Zealand and Otway St, Osborne, Charles Falcon Archibald, his sister Lilian Jackson, 2 Blenheim St, NSW and others. Many of the Archibald clan are buried at Rusland but I fail to make the connection between Aus & South Lakes!

Lt Archibalds full service record can be viewed here

Les Poilu

2010-06-01T18:28:00.007+01:00

My daughter has just returned from some months teaching English at the old town of Riom near Clermont Ferrand, France. While there she haunted the local flea market and on Christmas morning I received a great little pressie, the result of her rooting about. It was a box of glass plate negatives of people and places in the Auvergne around the time of the Great War.

One of the best images is of this group of Poilu of the 261st Regiment. How many of these brave Frenchmen survived Verdun? Who were the 261st Regiment?

Maybe one of the guys was married to this pretty lady and father to her young daughter. Who are they?

The French losses in the War were staggering, 1,397,800 combatants plus some 300,000 civilians; about 4.27% of the population. How did these people taking a stroll on the hills above Clermond Ferrand deal with their loss?

French memorials are pretty much Gallic versions of Cumbrian memorials; the soldier, victorious marching into a world of peace or the small stone in the village square with a list of names.

The differences are in the number of names, far more in France, plus the addition of civilian dead. An added difference in many instances is the addition of the names of resistance fighters, shot by the Germans between 1940-45. The Countryside is littered with such small memorials. French memorials often have shells and other, similar hardware.

Snapshots

2010-06-01T17:03:00.008+01:00

One of the best bits of blogging is when people get in touch and provide snippets of information.

I recently received a series of snapshots dating from 1931 showing the Johnson family in and around Ireleth and Askam. The first images, below, show the family outside the Railway Inn and then standing around in Dale St. The lady holding the coat is Elizabeth Johnson, nee Holmes.

This delightful pic shows Mabel Johnson standing beside the recently unveiled War Memorial.

The darkness of the name panel suggests that the gilded letters of the names of the dead remained unweathered. It also suggests that the wreath and cross may have been partially gilded. The gold leaf was provided by the architect free gratis.

The final image is of the Johnson family on Askam Railway Station. They have put their coats on, it must have got cold!

The Peninsula War at Bassenthwaite and Backbarrow

2010-05-16T11:13:00.011+01:00

I can only say again what a remarkable tool the internet is.
A couple of enthusiasts from Longsleddale have a website that contains a huge collection of Cumbrian maps and an increasingly large collection of photographs. Browsing through the pictures I discovered this image of a memorial in St Bega's Church, Bassenthwaite.

The memorial commemorates Walter Vane, Captain in the 1st Foot Guards (Coldstreams) who died of wounds received at the Battle of Bayonne on 14 April 1814. This action was a rather bitter affair fought 2 days after the abdication of Napoleon on April 12. As Arthur Wellesley pursued Marshall Soult into France he left a force of some 20,000 troops under Lt Gen John Hope to invest the city of Bayonne. After a leisurely six week siege the French Commander, Thouvenot, though aware of Napoleon's demise launched a column against the British lines. The Brits lost 838 men, the French 905. General Hope was captured.
Captain Vane was buried close to the village of Boucat (Boucau).

'along with many of his brother Officers who bravely fell in the service of their country'.

No mention of the common soldier there then! Indeed they were largely forgotten, only receiving a medal for their services in The Peninsula in 1848. This old veteran seen below wears his peninsula medal sometime around 1860; a wonderful image held at the V&A in London.

However, many veterans were lauded in their home communities. In Ulverston an old soldier who lost an arm at Waterloo and who lived at 'Waterloo Cottage' on the Flan reputedly never bought a pint of beer in his life, simply regaling visitors with tales of the Battle for the price of his drink! And at Haverthwaite there is a remarkable tombstone commemorating William Fell, a Light Infantry Man who fought throughout the Peninsula War.

The inscription reads:

Requiescat in Pace

William Fell, A soldier of the 52nd Light Infantry who fought in that Gallant Regiment at Pombal, Almeida, on the Plains of Cordillia, at Sabugal, Busaco, Fuentes D'Onoro, at the siege and storming of Ciudad Rodrigo (a volunteer), Badajoz (severely wounded), Salamanca, Vittoria, and Orthez (dangerously wounded).Was born at Brow Edge and buried on the 27th of June 1852 in Haverthwaite church yard.
BG to whom he left his medal of six clasps dedicates to British valour this humble stone

BG is Dr Gilpin of Ulverston.

The image here shows a Peninsula medal awarded to a man in the 52nd Foot.

Leaving the army in 1821 after more than 12 years service William Fell returned to Backbarrow to work in a paper mill and later a Cotton Mill. In 1824 when claiming a pension in Dublin Fell stated that he was 'worn out with service'. He also worked as an armed guard on the local coach and as an old man made toffee and cakes for visitors to to the lakes, meeting them at Newby Bridge while wearing his medal. There is a full biography of him in CWAAS Transactions, 3rd Series, Vol IV.

The 52nd Light Infantry became the Ox & Bucks LI who famously landed at Pegasus Bridge on the Orne at the opening of the Battle for Normandy.

Bampton - in the valley of the Lowther

2010-04-21T22:31:00.010+01:00

Summer is a comin' in so it's days out with friends. And a wonderful clear blue sky with no contrails! Yesterday to Shap and some of the villages in the valley of the river Lowther. Bampton Grange was one, with a name like that it must have been a grange of the Premonstratensian Abbey of Shap, a favourite place of mine. Its romantic ruins nestle in the fells some miles away.

The church at Bampton, an early 18th century building replacing a pre 1170 foundation, has three memorials to 20th century conflicts. One each for the dead of two world wars and a large wooden roll listing the guys who served between 1914/18.

The two stone ones might be Beattie's of Carlisle. They certainly have a look of their work.

There is also a Memorial Hall; is this a War Memorial?

However, the most interesting memorial is in a dark corner thro' the church door at the foot of the tower. It commemorates Vice Admiral Charles Richardson KCB, a man educated at the village school who made good in Nelson's navy. The memorial seeks to inspire other callow village youths to follow his example. The Admiral fought in the battles of The Glorious 1st June, Camperdown, at Flushing, the Indies, indeed he served King and country throughout the world for decades.

Richardson entered the Navy in November 1787 as servant to Captain Richard Strachan aboard the Vestal, 28 guns. In the early 1790s he was employed on various riverboats supporting Abercromby's operations against Tippoo Saib. By 1793 he was in the Channel Fleet aboard the Alexander, 74, under Captain West and in '94 the Royal George, 100, flagship of Sir Alexander Hood, in which ship he partook in Lord Howe's action of 1st June.

In August of 1794 he was commissioned Lt in the Circe, 28, under Capt Halkett, which was heavily involved in the mutiny at the Nore. In October 1797 Richardson was at Camperdown, a battle fought against the Dutch, and famously took an open boat to Admiral De Winter's dismasted flagship, took him prisoner and personally presented him to Lord Duncan, the victorious British Commander. Richardson was rewarded with promotion to signals Lieutenant aboard Duncan's flagship, Kent, 74. In 1798 he commanded a division of seamen in the Helder, took a Dutch 58 home as a prize before sailing with Abercromby to Egypt where he fought at Aboukir on 8th March 1801.

In July 1802 he took command of Alligator in which ship he directed operations leading to the reduction of Demerara, Essequibo and Berbice in 1803 and Surinam in 1804. As a consequence of these actions he raised his broad pennant in the Centaur, 74 and then the Caesar, 80. In this ship and in company with Richard Strachan, he pursued the French ships that escaped annihalation at Trafalgar, destroyed three French frigates at Sable d'Olonne, a French squadron at Aix Roads and then went on to land at the Scheldt where as senior Naval Officer he took the French surrender. During the investment of Flushing he commanded a battery of 24 pounders with sufficient effect to earn the praises of the Earl of Chatham, C in C British forces. In April 1812 Richardson commanded the frigate Semiramis and proceeded to take a significant number of prizes, among them the French privateer Grand Jean Bart, 14 guns. He continued to serve in the Channel, off Lisbon, the Cape of Good Hope and China until he was invalided out of active service in 1822.

What a career! What memories!

His prizes will have made him a wealthy man. Certainly he bought the estate of Painsthorpe Hall, East Yorkshire where he died, aged 81 in 1850. It is clearly a beautiful place.

New look at Howgill

2010-04-10T20:51:00.007+01:00

Today was beautiful, the first really warm day after a long winter so I took off with a couple of friends for lunch and a mooch round the huge second hand bookshop at Sedbergh. Afterwards we drove up to Howgill and sat in the churchyard at Holy Trinity, soaking up the sun and reading the papers.

Going around the memorials of Cumbria it has become clear that many have suffered from the ravages of time. Rain and wind have eroded them and they have become grey and featureless. However, people still care and an increasing number seem to benefiting from the various grants that are available for their cleaning and restoration.

The church at Howgill was built in 1838 replacing an earlier foundation endowed in 1685 by John Robinson, Yeoman. It is a beautiful place. The parish covers a wide area on the west side of the rolling Howgill Fells, Alfred Wainwright's favourite place. The community's war memorial is in the churchyard. I was there early last year and it did look rather sad.

So what a pleasure it was to visit today to find it cleaned and recut looking beautiful among the spring daffodils.

Inside the church is a wooden Roll of Honour bearing the names of all who served. The listing is quite complicated. Offices are at the head of the list and the rest descend in rank order. Unusually it appears to indicate the year in which the men volunteered or were called to to colours. Some are pre-war regulars including John Sedgwick who was awarded the Meritorious Service Medal and Mons Star. Edmund Herd won the Military Medal and Bar.

Though unsigned the Roll is likely to have been made by Simpson of Kendal - a fine exponent of Arts & Crafts cabinetmaking. During and after the Great War Simpson obtained a lot of commissions to create pieces of furniture in oak and it is said that he made most of these items of American oak, keeping his precious stock of English oak for memorials.

War is a dreadful thing, the last resort of inept and bankrupt politics that plays with the lives of the young. And not only the young, but their devastated families. Thus the churchyards ad cemeteries of Cumbria are replete with gravestones bearing the names of dead children gathered into family memory. There is one such at Howgill where the grave of James Herd and his wife, Margaret, of Bantyghyll also carries the name of their youngest son, Frederick Proud Herd, Pte, 2/5th South Staffordshire Rgt, killed at Passchendaele in September 1917.

Frederick lies at Dochy Farm Cemetery near Langemark, a long way from Howgill. His mother was 94 when she died in 1958. I don't imagine many hours passed in the 41 years following her son's death that Margaret didn't grieve for him.

Death at Omdurman and a colonial war crime in the Sudan

2010-03-29T19:21:00.017+01:00

Friend Rod has started turning up regularly with pics of war memorials he has encountered on his travels. The latest is a stack of pics from the north of the county including Lanercost.

This wonderful former Augustinian priory largely built from the stones of Hadrian's Wall & often ravaged by marauding Scots was adopted as the parish church after the reformation. It has a number of memorials two of which commemorate brothers.

On the south wall of the nave is a slate slab bearing the names of the only two sons of artist John Charlton and his wife, Kate.

Both men were killed within days of each other. Hugh Vaughan, 7th Bn Northumberland Fusiliers, aged 32 on June 24, 1916 at Whytschaete. His brother, John Macfarlane, 21st Bn Northumberland Fusiliers, was killed exactly a week later at La Boiselle on the First Day of the Somme. Beneath the memorial there is an additional plaque for John, their father, who died at the family home, Banks House, Bamburgh in 1917. When I lived in north Cumberland as a boy I was told that he died of inconsolable grief. Echoes of Kipling's terrible grief on losing his only son, Jack.

There is also a terrible irony in that John made his reputation painting pictures of, among other things, glorious scenes of Imperial Military events such as The Charge of the Light Brigade.

On the opposite wall of the nave is a further memorial containing bronze relief portraits of Hubert George Lyulph Howard & his brother Christopher Edward, two sons of 11 children born to George, 9th Earl of Carlisle and his wife, Rosalind.

Christopher, a Lieutenant in the 8th Royal Irish Hussars, died at Slaines Castle, the Scottish seat of the Hay Earls of Errol, in 1896.

His Elder brother, Hubert, was killed at the Battle of Omdurman in the Sudan on September 2nd 1898, an Imperial campaign fought to avenge the death of Chinese Gordon at Khartoum in 1885.

Herbert Kitchener, soon to be known as of Khartoum, was leading 25,000 British, Sudanese and Egyptian troops against 50,000 Dervishes or Ansar, the followers of Abdullah al-Taashi, The Mahdi.

The Brits lost 430 killed and wounded. The Ansar lost 10,000 killed, 13,000 wounded and 5,000 taken prisoner. After the battle Kitchener had the Arab wounded slaughtered.

Members of the Lincolnshire Rgt at the Battle.

Hubert Howard was not in the services but was working as a special correspondent for The Times & various other newspapers, an adventurous Churchillian aristocrat, typical of late Victorian England. He was educated at Balliol, Oxford, went to Cuba in the early stages of the rebellion against the Spanish authorities and joined the insurgents in the summer of 1895.

When the second Matabele war broke out in the spring of 1896, he travelled there to serve as a lieutenant in Robertson’s “Cape Boys”. In August, Howard was severely wounded in the leg during the attack on Secombo’s stronghold by Colonel Plumer’s column.

An African Warrior

For a time he was then Private Secretary to Earl Grey of tea fame. After his return from South Africa he was called to the Bar and worked in the legal profession for a time. Following his death he was buried in the Sudanese desert.

Omdurman was a bloodbath, a Sudanese holocaust. The battle and the memory of the Mahdi is still revered in the Sudan where the Brits are considered to be war criminals .... for more check out this link or this one.

The Earl of Carlisle lost another son in the Great War, Michael Francis Stafford died serving as a Private with the 2nd Bn Honourable Artillery Company although he had previously been a Lieutenant with the 18th Hussars and the Scots Guards. He was killed on 9 October 1917, age 37 at Passchendaele.

A glimpse of Staveley in Cartmel

2010-03-14T22:58:00.011Z

I have favourite places. A seat in the corner of the churchyard of St Mary's at Staveley in Cartmel is one of them. It is a wonderful place of quiet above the busy A590. The church itself was built as a chapelry after the suppression of Cartmel Priory though it has been subject to a couple of restorations and rebuilds since the 16th century.

The churchyard is particularly interesting for the variety of grave markers and tombstones quite a few of which commemorate high status families. One of these is the Ridehalgh family grave containing the mortal remains of three generations.

The family lived at Fell Foot, a substantial house on the shores of Lake Windermere now owned by the National Trust and run as a country park. The house and estate has a colourful history and passed through a number of hands until it was bought by Colonel George John Miller Ridehalgh, Lord of the Manor of Urmston, about 1859. He was a great benefactor in the district, an obsessive yachtsman and steam-boat enthusiast. Following his death the house was eventually sold in 1907 by his cousin, Wm Smith Ridehalgh, whereupon it was immediately demolished. The family moved to Broughton Lodge, closer to Cartmel. William Smith and his wife, Ethel, had just one son, George William. Born in 1916 he was serving as a 2nd Lt with the Welsh Guards when he died in 1940 to be buried in the family vault.

At some subsequent date his grieving widowed mother and his sisters erected a window in the north aisle of the church bearing figures of the archangels, Saints Gabriel & Raphael.

Oddly his name does not appear on two Rolls in the church but it does appear on the WW2 panel in the Lych gate, the village's primary war memorial. This gate, built from village oak, was constructed by the Wren family of Newby Bridge and unveiled in 1927

I have the following from friend Howard;

I remember old Mrs Ridehalgh living on her own at Broughton Lodge. We lived at Longlands Farm as kids and I remember her, a tiny old lady, peering through the steering wheel of a Vauxhall as she drove past the drive end. Her maiden name was Ravenscroft and she was renowned as a beauty, as the picture attached clearly shows.

The Ravenscrofts were a wealthy cotton trading family from Birkenhead and lived at Wood Broughton. Her brothers all fought in the war.

This is an extract from my Field Broughton book; "The third house in the picture is Broughton Grange, then owned by the Ravenscrofts. The four sons of the household were reported by the Cartmel Parish Magazine of October 1914 to have "all gained commissions". Martin joined the 3rd West Lancs Field Artillery and gained the Military Cross in 1917. Gordon and Harold were both Lieutenants in 4th Battalion Lancashire Fusiliers, which was at Barrow-in-Furness at the time. This was an Extra Reserve battalion which remained at Barrow until October 1916 when it was transferred to Barry in South Wales where it remained for the duration of hostilities. Gordon was promoted to captain in the summer of 1915 and ended the war with this rank in The King’s Own. The Ravenscroft brothers went out to France and both were in the "thick of it" during the Somme battles of 1916. Harold was reported to be home in August 1916 after being wounded in the right shoulder and Gordon was back on duty after being gassed.
The fourth brother, Trevor, was commissioned into the "Lancashire Huzzars" and joined the Royal Flying Corps in 1915. The January 1916 Cartmel Parish magazine said, "Trevor Ravenscroft of RFC has had a wonderful escape. He fell from a height of 1300 ft with his aeroplane, diving headlong into a tree near the Brooklands Aerodrome. He was roped into his seat so did not fall out. The machine went straight down through the tree, cutting off branches 6 inches thick as though they were matchwood. When the inhabitants of the house nearby rushed out they found the airman walking about with a bleeding nose. Stranger still, the house was that of Miss Egerton, St George's Hill, Byfleet, Weybridge, who was delighted to be of assistance to one from Cartmel Valley, even though his visit had been so abrupt! We are truly thankful that he is none the worse." He was later reported to have been many times over the German lines in his aeroplane."

Memorials at Gosforth

2010-03-12T20:30:00.006Z

There is still a deal of snow on the tops but it has been sunny recently, the crocus are coming through and spring is just round the corner! So today I set off with friend Al for beef and ale pie at the Wasdale Head Inn, an amazing place. On the way home we dropped by the village of Gosforth. In the churchyard here is one of England's great treasures, a superb 10th century Scandinavian cross.

In the church itself there are a number of memorials to men of the district who have died in conflict. I have already posted that of Capt Chas Parker, RM.

Of equal interest in a marble plaque, created by Wm Brown of Stonehouse, Devon, commemorating Captain Sir Humphrey Le Fleming Senhouse, KCB, KCH -[Knight Commander of the Hanoverian Order of Guelph], RN, of Seascale, who died aged 60 at Canton during the First Opium War. Having served in the Royal Navy since 1801 his end came on June 13, 1841 aboard HMS Blenheim, a Third Rate 74 built at Deptford in 1813. He had been Senior Naval Officer of the China Squadron.

Capt Senhouse was buried at the Portuguese enclave of Macau where the monument below was erected by fellow Officers. It bears the Senhouse family crest.

Sir Humphrey was a scion of the ancient family of Senhouse of Netherhall & Gosforth who had lived in the parish since the reign of Richard I. He was the third of ten children produced by William & Elizabeth Senhouse and a grandson of Sir Geo Fleming, Bishop of Carlisle.

The First Opium War was a pretty unpleasant business, a profoundly cynical exercise in Imperialism on the part of the British. The Chinese War Junks were blown out of the water by steam powered British warships. Part of the Treaty of Nanjing, drawn up at the war's end and seen here, saw Britain's acquisition of Hong Kong. The conflict also produced a long period of instability in the Chinese Empire as peasants attempted to overthrow the Quing dynasty.

Arnside Roll

2010-01-24T00:47:00.006Z

I have been trying to get a good photograph of a memorial in Arnside for some years. Unfortunately it was hung in the billiard room of the Village Institute. The windows were covered and the light insufficient to allow a reasonable quality image to be obtained. However, in recent months it has been moved to a much lighter building which has allowed a fine high def picture to be taken.

This superb Roll is painted on vellum and lists all the men of Arnside who served. The dead are marked with small gilt crosses. It is signed by Agnes Audrey Hilton and dated 1923. It is a superb example of Deco decoration.

Three years earlier Agnes Hilton had created a very similar Roll at Milnethorpe, on paper.

Agnes Hilton was the daughter of Robert Hilton, from 1904 - 21 Director of The Keswick School of Industrial Arts.

The design of this beautiful Compote, made by the Keswick School, is attributed to Robert.

The sentiments expressed - MANY FLOWERS SET FREE BY SUMMERS EARLIEST DUTY - echo the imagery employed by his daughter in the decoration of the Rolls. There are also similarities in the decorative lettering.

Agnes Hilton designed a further Roll which is in the Parish church at Beetham.

Peace and after

2010-01-17T20:53:00.007Z

Killing is remorselessness in the history of Cumbria, Britain and indeed human history and then the paradox that, following such events, people invest such efforts into the remembrance of the consequences like a belated guilt trip. But remembrance of war is a complicated business encompassing national euphoria and vast grief. It has always been thus.

I have just finished reading a biography of Queen Elizabeth I by Allison Weir in which there is a description of the celebrations held throughout England following the defeat of The Armada. A famous image commemorating this great naval victory is the Armada Portrait of Gloriana herself commissioned in the year of the battle, so called from the images of the action seen in the background.

I have it in my mind that trees were also planted that year though I cannot be certain where. But tree planting became an established form of memorials commemorating war and peace, and great national events. This picture shows a tree planting somewhere around the Cartmel peninsula in the early years of the twentieth century. Judging by the fashions it is probably Queen Victoria''s Jubilee or the coronation of Edward VII or GeorgeV. There are many examples in Cumbria of trees being planted to celebrate such events and also following conflict many after 1918.

After the peace of 1919 there was a degree of confusion over what memorials were commemorating. Although they have come to be seen as memorialising the dead, to contemporaries there was also the important issue of service to King & Empire and the celebration of a Great Victory. Thus many towns and villages displayed military hardware, items that now seem incongruous. Militarism, however, was a central part of the Victorian ethos of the Muscular Christian Crusade against the forces of barbaric darkness that lay beyond Dover. Commemorations throughout the 19th century often employed martial images. The pic here shows the celebrations in Grange over Sands following either the Relief of Ladysmith in 1900 or the ending of the Boer War a couple of years later. Can't imagine such as this in the Ulverston carnival.

As described elsewhere on this blog peace after the Great War was only celebrated after the signing of the final Peace Treaty at Versailles on June 28, 1919. The King decreed that July 19th be designated 'Peace Day' and communities all over the country contrived celebrations. There was talk of beacons being lit throughout the country as had happened in 1588 when the Armada was sightedbut it never came to pass. Below is a pic of the peace parade in the Arnside/Silverdale area.

It is of course the memorials of the Great War that are central to our understanding of the processes of memorialisation. This last year saw the death of the last soldiers and sailors from this conflict. In the 1920s & '30s pretty much everyone who gathered at memorials were there because of The Somme, Passchendaele, Gallipoli and a hundred other battlefields of 1914 - 18. The men had experienced it, wore their medals and marched proudly like these guys in Church Walk, Ulverston.

The rituals of Remembrance became established and persist to this day, though the sentiments have subtly changed and we no longer have soldiers with rifles reversed. There were more people attending then. Unlike in Blair's wars the entire nation was touched by recent events and more respectful of authority.

The building immediately behind the cross was demolished to make way for 'Woolies'. In the mid 19th century an upstairs room was the venue for an annual reunion of Furness men who had served with Wellington and Nelson.

New Book

2010-01-14T21:52:00.007Z

Something that really winds me up is the manner in which war memorials have historically been ignored in studies of art history, even by such people as Niklaus Pevsner in his wonderful guides to The Buildings of England. However, Mr Pevsner is not totally dismissive, he does acknowledge the memorial at Hawkshead as 'An Anglo Saxon Cross designed by WG Collingwood'. Sadly, he is wrong; it is if anything a Scandinavian wheel head cross!

But what a beautiful thing, recently cleaned and recut.

A posting really has to be done describing WG Collingwood and his memorials. I am getting closer following an email chat with Matthew Townend of York University. Matt's interests are in his own words,

Old English and Old Norse language and literature, and philology and onomastics. In particular my research focuses on England and Scandinavia in the ninth to eleventh centuries, and combines linguistic, literary, and historical approaches: I am interested in the language and literature of the Vikings in England, Old Norse praise-poetry, and late Anglo-Saxon literary culture.

Matt has recently written a book that has been published by the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society that examines the manner in which much of the perceived historical and cultural identity of Cumbria, and arguably many of its post 1918 memorials, was formed out of the scholarship of William Gershon Collingwood and his friends and their passionate interest in Norse history around the region.

The Vikings and Victorian Lakeland.
The Norse Mediaevalism
of WG Collingwood
and His Contemporaries

... can be purchased using this order form.

Wileman & son, Kendal - Illuminators

2010-01-14T20:53:00.004Z

In the years that I have been looking at war memorials throughout Cumbria I have come across some remarkable objects. Among these are a number of superbly executed illuminated Rolls. A couple that are not screwed to the wall, at Selside & Underbarrow, bear a label showing that they were made by Wileman & sons of Kendal.

The 1901 Kendal census describes a Thomas Wileman, of Mayfield, as a House Painter and Decorator, aged 39. He had two sons, George and Thomas. A 1920s directory of Kendal lists a Thos Wileman as having an Art Shop in one of the Yards in Kendal, presumably the illustrator, but - which Thomas was it?

The work is certainly impressive. The Roll created for Underbarrow school is particularly impressive - a fine piece of work in the Deco style.

1914 memorial

2010-01-14T19:23:00.005Z

It is an all to common misconception that war memorial, or memorials commemorating conflict, were only erected upon the ending of hostilities. This is far from being the case.

At Winster there is a hand written 'Scroll of Honour' which is the earliest commemorative document to have been created following the outbreak of the Great War that I have come across. It clearly bears a date of 1914.

It lists those 27 individuals in the community who have signed up for The League of Young Patriots - motto, 'I Serve' . Presumably they were the youngsters of the village. I know nothing of the organisation but the sentiments that is expresses, of patriotism, honour and service, are ubiquitous on Great War memorials of all types.

A comparable object, tho' outside the county, is a memorial produced by the 'Prayer League' at St Johns church, Calder Vale in Bowland Forest on the Lancashire/Yorkshire border. The group - Established in the 2nd Year of the War of Nations, AD 1916 - was I guess prompted by similar sentiments as those expressed at Winster; support for the idea of the war and its successful conclusion and and an expression of grief perhaps or hope for the safe return of 'The Boys'.... Given the time of its creation, the year of The Somme, prayer was probably a great source of comfort to those who joined. Interestingly nearly all the names are of women or girls.

It is not professionally done is never the less beautifully illuminated.

Charney Hall School, Grange over Sands, Update

2009-12-17T17:20:00.007Z

When setting up this Blog I did hope that people out there would respond with information about the memorials that I described and would perhaps fill in some of the gaps in the historical record. In this it has been marginally successful; in about four instances there has been real interest and the story of the memorials has been substantially enhanced. None more so than the posting about the Memorial Hall at Charney Hall School, Grange over Sands. Here a couple of 'old boys' have got the bit between their teeth and painted a vivid picture of life at the school in the third quarter of the twentieth century and of the part played by the Memorial Hall in the life of the scholars.

Comparing the images on the original posting with this aerial photo a clearer picture emerges of the school's environs.

This pic was sent by one of the 'old boys', John Cranna, who has been most informative. Over the last couple of days he has sent me a few excellent photos and documents. The one below shows the original location of the School's World War 2 memorial in the entrance porch of the new building beyond the cricketers.

This is now mounted in the nave of the Parish church in Grange. From an account written in c1955 it would appear that this was unveiled in the early 1950s.

Sadly my original question, whether or not there was some form of memorial listing the great war dead by name, remains tantalisingly unanswered.

If there is such a listing then they would be contemporaries of Hubert Podmore, the headmaster's son, who was killed in the conflict.

What a nice, gentle looking guy. A Gentleman. His battlefield cross is in the Parish church at Grange.

Sudan 1884 - 5 - on holiday!

2009-11-26T20:35:00.007Z

My mate Rod has just returned to a damp North Lancashire after spending a week cruising along the Nile looking at the antiquities and eating humous. True to form he kept an eye cocked for war memorials and, by golly, he found one!

One of the trips was to the Temple at Philae in southern Egypt, one of the monuments that was moved, stone by stone, during the construction of the Aswan dam. The pic here dates dates from the later 19th century.

Throughout history it has been a military post on the boundaries of Egypt and Sudan, for Egyptians, Macedonians, Romans and British. It is a beautiful place I imagine - somewhere I would much like to go.

During the Gordon relief expedition of 1884-5 Philae was a base area for British forces advancing southwards into the Sudan to confront the Mahdist forces who had invested the residency under the command of Chinese Gordon. One of the principal brigades employed was a column of Camel troops, volunteers, drawn from a number of regular mounted and infantry Regiments of the British Army. During the course of its advance into the Sudan it was engaged in a series of engagements with native forces during which a number of men were killed.

In remembrance of these losses their comrades carved a memorial on a wall of the Philae Temple listing those who died from 'The Heavy Camel Regiment'.

Typically of memorials commemorating the dead of Britain's myriad Imperial conflicts only the Officers are named. All are listed in two columns; killed in action on the left, died of disease on the right. They are further listed under their original Regiments, Scots Greys, Lancers & Dragoon Guards

Don't know if there are any Cumbrians here, but likely!

The campaign that these men were engaged in culminated in the Battle of Omdurman. See here for my posting on a Cumbrian fatality at this action.

Lost memorial found

2009-11-18T00:33:00.007Z

Got round to visiting Sir John Barrow junior school in Ulverston where a memorial, walled up thirty years ago, re-emerged during recent building works.
It was both disappointing and fascinating!

The memorial, if such it is, was painted directly onto the wall and clearly shows the Arms of King George V and the date 1917. Unfortunately there is more disappearing into the ceiling that has not emerged during recent renovations. If there is a list of names or a clear indication that it is a memorial then it must be hidden there.

A small panel at the bottom tells the viewer that it was presented by J Martin Esq on March 9th 1917.

As can be seen on the lower pic it is quite badly damaged by people using it as a notice board of some sort. It is badly pitted with holes from, presumably, drawing pins and such.

Remembrance 2009 - Cecil & Gerald Spring-Rice

2009-11-09T20:58:00.009Z

The origin of the lyrics of this hymn is a poem written in 1908 by Cecil Spring-Rice, a diplomat in the British Embassy in Stockholm.

Called Urbs Dei or The Two Fatherlands, the poem described the Muscular Christianity and deep patriotism that is so much a part of the ethos and ritual of post 1919 Remembrance. The second verse is rarely sung.

I vow to thee, my country, all earthly things above,
Entire and whole and perfect, the service of my love;
The love that asks no question, the love that stands the test,
That lays upon the altar the dearest and the best;
The love that never falters, the love that pays the price,
The love that makes undaunted the final sacrifice.

I heard my country calling, away across the sea,

Across the waste of waters she calls and calls to me.

Her sword is girded at her side, her helmet on her head,

And round her feet are lying the dying and the dead.

I hear the noise of battle, the thunder of her guns,

I haste to thee my mother, a son among thy sons.

And there's another country, I've heard of long ago,

Most dear to them that love her, most great to them that know;

We may not count her armies, we may not see her King;

Her fortress is a faithful heart, her pride is suffering;

And soul by soul and silently her shining bounds increase,

And her ways are ways of gentleness, and all her paths are peace

In 1912, Spring-Rice was posted as Ambassador to the USA. After the Americans entered the war in 1917, he was recalled to Britain but shortly before his departure in January 1918 he re-wrote and renamed his poem, significantly altering the first verse to concentrate on the huge losses suffered by British soldiers during the intervening years. Also, presumably, the second verse.

In 1921 the English composer Gustav Holst adapted the music from a section of Jupiter from his Planets Suite to create a setting for the poem.

The music was extended slightly to fit the final two lines of the first verse; the resulting melody or hymn tune is usually referred to as Thaxted, named after the the quintessential English village in Essex where Holst lived for many years.

The hymn was first performed in 1925 and very soon became an English anthem.

Cecil Spring Rice had a younger brother, Gerald, who was killed serving with the 11th Lonsdale Bn, Border Regiment, on May 26th 1916. He is buried at Authuille on The Somme but commemorated by a couple of memorials in The Lakes; at Watermillock on the western shore of Ullswater and on the lower bridge at Aira Force. The upper bridge is a memorial to Cecil.

Gerald's Watermillock memorial is a beautifully executed copper plaque, on oak, on the north wall of the nave; probably Keswick School. At the time of his death he was living with his wife at Mell Fell House, a delightful residence just yards away from the church.

Newly discovered memorial in Silverdale

2009-11-06T00:21:00.006Z

(If Bill Brabban of Durham reads this again can he check out the comments at the bottom please!?)

My mate Rod who has a vast collection of stuff on the history of Silverdale sent me an email this week about a local pamphlet he holds,

"Silverdale - The Loveliest Spot on Morecambe Bay" published by the Silverdale Advancement Association. The copy has no date but a subsequent edition was published in 1936.

Both describe the purchase in 1921 of Bleasdale House by The Bradford Dyers Association as a convalescent home and as a memorial to 707 members of the association who had died in the war and also as a memorial to 37 killed when Low Moor Munitions Co Ltd suffered a disastrous explosion in 1916.

The house was built for the Sharp family but during the war had been used as an auxiliary hospital.

The pic below shows Cpl William Brabban with a couple of nurses. Cpl William Brabban, 18th Northumberland Fusiliers, was injured on 1st July 1916 on the opening day of Battle of Somme. Shrapnel in lower spine and shell shock.

Happily he survived and went on to marry Nurse Hilda Florence Dunn, of Haslingden nr Sandbach, at St Johns church in Silvedale in July 1917.

Great Musgrave

2009-11-02T16:48:00.011Z

Hidden away on the banks of the Eden at Great Musgrave is the magical church of St Theobald. There have been a number of churches around this site since at least the late twelfth century, and probably long before. Prior to 1248 the living was under the patronage of St Mary's, York.

There are a number of interesting memorials.

At the east end of the nave is a rough hewn table with two small dedicatory brasses on the edge commemorating members of the Fawcitt family.

The earlier of the two is;

In Memory of
Sub Lieut Bernard Fawcitt RNVR

Licata Sicily 10th July 1943

Temporary Sub Lt Fawcitt was killed, aged 20, in the invasion of Sicily - operation Husky - while serving aboard the Landing Ship Infantry HMS Princess Josephine Charlotte, a converted Belgian cross channel ferry.

Prior to Husky the ship had served as a commando carrier at St Nazaire. Young Fawcitt had been Mentioned in Dispatches sometime prior to his death, perhaps at St Nazaire. But why is he commemorated in this obscure corner of Cumbria? On the CWGC website his parents are named as Norman and Ethel Fawcitt, of Rothley, Leicestershire.

The Licata landings in which Fawcitt was killed was a predominantly American operation at the far western end of the landing beaches.

As well as the Fawcitt table there are two Great War memorials placed on the south wall of the nave. They still have their, probably, original brass candlesticks and vases on a shelf below, altogether a simple village war shrine.

The large Roll of Honour is painted on board and lists all of the parish who served 1914 - 19.

Sadly the paint used a lot of black pigment of a type that is now cracking and discolouring the gilding in which the names are painted. There is a nurse (her unit is I M N S R?) and guys from the district who served with the Canadian and Australian Expeditionary Forces.

Five men are listed on the Roll as having died but only four appear on an accompanying brass plaque produced by F Osborne & Co of London, church furnishers.

This plaque is identical in form to WW1 & WW2 memorials in the Methodist church at Ousby and, possibly, to one in the parish church there. Ousby church is now redundant, up for sale and permanently locked.

Death in Cyprus, 1956

2009-10-28T19:49:00.006Z

'Nother Last of The Summer Wine days today - up the Eden valley, one of the most beautiful places in England. On the way we drove past Grayrigg, a small village between Kendal & Tebay that was in the news a couple of years ago following a dreadful train crash on the west coast mainline which passes through the nearby Lune gorge.

In the centre of the village is the church of St John the Evangelist, a former chapelry of Kendal.

In front of the church, beside the road, is a small memorial made of Orton limestone.

It bears the names of the dead from all the smaller communities that make up the parish through the conflicts of the 20th century. It bears an odd sort of inscription of c1919;

Some men have no memorial
But these are they whose
Righteousness
Hath not been forgotten

It is unusual in that it has the name of Royal Marine Benet Carr Blakeway who died on February 9th 1956 during the Cyprus emergency.

He was 25 years old.

This contemporary newsreel gives a flavour of why the young guy died.

Apart from having his name added to the village war memorial Marine Blakeway's memory was further maintained by his parents donation of a beautifully bound service book to the church.

The flyleaf bears an illuminated dedication.

These are the sort of small memorials that are often lost. This service book lies largely forgotten and apparently unused at the back of the church. It could certainly do with a bit of TLC/

Grasmere

2009-10-23T18:48:00.008+01:00

Found myself having a grey day this week but the sun was out so I took off and had a trip out to Keswick. To get there I had to drive past Grasmere, a delightful village lying beneath the Lion & the Lamb at the foot of Dunmail Raise. While there I made a detour to take some pics of Broadgate Meadow.

Hidden on the low outcrop in the trees is a decorated cross of local green slate, the village war memorial of 1919.

It was designed by William Gershon Collingwood, antiquarian, artist & secretary to John Ruskin. At some point I'll get round to putting a post up about him. On the reverse is the name of the memorial mason, W Bromley of Keswick. Did he carve it or merely erect it? Probably made it, although a number of Collingwood's memorials were carved by his daughter, Barbara.

The cross is one of the more fascinating in the county. The secretary of the memorial committee was fellow antiquarian Rev Hardwicke Rawnsley who had retired to Allan Bank, Grasmere in 1917 after serving as Vicar of Crosthwaite, Keswick for 34 years. Rawnsley was a close friend of Collingwood and it was probably as a consequence of this that WG was invited to create the memorial. In response he created a remarkable object, it feels like a pastiche of a 7th century Anglian cross. Indeed it is probably inspired by the local belief that St Oswald preached here in the 7th century.

Below the wheel head is a dove and below that a stag trampling a dragon.

The dedication is;

In Honour of the Men
of Grasmere who
Fought and in Ever
Thankful Memory
of the Men who Died
For God For King For Home
For Freedom Peace & Right
In The Great War
1914 - 1918
1939 - 1945

(1939-1945 added post '45)

Below this again is a poem,

THE IMMORTAL DEAD
These died in war that we in peace might live
They gave their best so we our best should give
Not for themselves, for freedom home & right
They died and bid us forward to the fight

See you to it that they shall not have died in vain.

Academics talk about 'The Language of Courage' or the 'Elevated Rhetoric' that is so closely associated with the Great War. Few memorials illustrate this better than Grasmere. Both inscriptions were probably dreamed up by Rawnsley - (I presume? Maybe not!). He was a vigorous Victorian patriot and wrote a considerable amount of rather histrionic poetry. Oddly, the poem, such an angry response to the war, reappears at Dent so maybe it is not Rawnsley.

There are no names on the memorial, the village dead are listed on a plaque in the nearby c12th century church of St Oswald where William Wordsworth and his family are buried.

Across Broadgate meadow there is a large oak tree.

Beside it is a small slate boulder explaining that the oak was planted by Canon Rawnsley on Peace Day, July 19 1919 when all the villagers of Grasmere and district gathered in Broadgate meadow to celebrate the signing of the Peace Treaty that finally wrote a line under the holocaust that was 1914-18.

On the opposite side of the meadow, just inside the gates, is a smaller tree.

A small stone at its foot bears a brass plaque explaining that this tree was planted on August 19, 1995 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of end of World War 2. So much war.

There are other memorials in the village - for another time!

Alston - part 1

2009-10-16T22:47:00.002+01:00

Went out for a Last of the Summer Wine day with friends, ending up in Alston, the highest market town in England.

The parish church of St Augustine of Canterbury which dominates the town was built in 1869, the third church on the site.

Wonderful aerial photo by Simon Ledingham

It was finaced by public subscription but with substantial contributions from Greenwich Hospital estates. These estates were originally held by the Radcliffe Earls of Derwentwater, a bastard line of Charles II by one of his mistresses. They were forfeit to the crown after James, the third Earl, was captured at Preston in 1715 and beheaded on Tower Hill. In 1765 all their lands were granted to Greenwich Hospital who in turn rented them out to tenant farmers and leased the mineral rights to substantial deposits of lead ore to The London Lead Company who became a major employer and benefactor.

After 1919 there was considerable discussion as to the appropriate form a memorial should take. In May 1920 it was agreed that Carlisle architect JH Martindale, who in 1889 had designed the reredos behind the altar, be approached to provide a design for a chancel screen. It would be made by Thomas Lawson of Carlisle at a cost of £415.

The initial proposal was that the dead of all faiths be listed by rank and date of death. This was later amended to a simple listing by christian & surname. After the names had been advertised in the local papers and checked with the various nonconformist chapels in the district they were carved on two panels on either side of the screen.

In the porch of the church there is another memorial high up on the wall. There is no indication of where it might have originated.

2009-10-05T20:34:00.007+01:00

In his book The Missing of The Somme, Geoff Dyer suggests a reason for the naming of names that is the focus of the War Memorial after 1918/19

In the naming processes, of putting one’s own loss against other’s in the community the pain of mothers, wives and fathers was subsumed in a list of names whose sheer scale was numbing...
Realising that grief could be rendered more manageable if simultaneously divided and shared by a million the scale of sacrifice was emphasised. Publicising the scale of the loss was the best way to make it bearable.

But there is another commonality to memorials that was central to their message; their place in the landscape.

After 1918 there were long discussions about the forms that memorials should take. At Milnethorpe.....

... the suggestion of tablets in the Church and the Methodist Chapel was ‘too insignificant’, a children’s playground and a mortuary chapel too expensive. Only the vicar wanted a lychgate. A village club was dismissed as there were already two underused venues. Private Knight, a demobilised soldier, suggested the memorial fund should be shared out amongst veterans. This was diplomatically rejected on the grounds that it would ‘ignore the fallen’. Like the vast majority of communities the final decision was a cross, of Portland stone, to be erected on the village green.

When a cross, obelisk or other similar funereal form was adopted they were often placed by the roadside so that the names of those lost would remain with the village people and more importantly be made public, engaged with by the itinerant traveller and ultimately, the nation. The fellside village in the hills of Cumbria very publicly claimed its place in the Empire's grief.

There are many examples in the county of roadside memorials.

Cowhills on the Northumberland/Durham border on the High Fells above Alston.

Cautley War Memorial.

The presentation of the dead was central to the memorial's purpose. By adopting the unspoken precedent of placing the names on the King's Highway for all to see the dead of all classes & castes became equals in the Army of the Dead. And as important the status of the pauper and his widow was seen to be equal to that of Prince's widows. The world was slower in 1920 and the vast majority of passers by would take time to gaze and reflect.

Here at Barbon the names on the memorial include those of plain dalesmen and two sons of Lord Shuttleworth

Cumbria & HMS Glorious

2009-09-04T10:25:00.016+01:00

On the east side of Ullswater is the church of St Peter of 1882 designed by John A Cory of Carlisle, sometime County Architect of Cumberland.

His greatest claim to fame is his work on Garlands Hospital, Carlisle, a place of some local repute.

Some way to the south of this rather bland building is the older church of St Martin of 1634.

Although of no great architectural merit St Peter's is a most poignant church from the point of view of memorials. In recent years it has become the focus for remembrance of HMS Glorious, an aircraft carrier sunk on June 8, 1940 during the ill fated Norwegian campaign.

The reason is a window on the south side of the church commemorating the death of Lt Commander William Hugh Parkin, aged 33, and the men of the Glorious. It is one of a series in the church designed and made by Jane Grey and inserted in 1975.

The window shows the ship viewed from above, ploughing thro' the waves. The phoenix rises from the flames, a symbol of the resurrection, and below is the ship's crest and an anchor, symbol of the Royal Navy. Below that is the bible and the symbol of the Trinity.

William Hugh Parkin (1869-1911), probably the father of Lt Commander Parkin & sometime Lt Colonel of the Westmorland & Cumberland Yeomanry, is also commemorated by a plaque in the church. Indeed another WH Parkin of Ravencragg, together with Anthony Parkin of Sharrow Bay, established St Peter's in 1882.

Since the insertion of the window a couple of people have left smaller memorials to men who were lost, a photo of the ship pre-war and this card with a sprig of lavender attached that names Royal Marine Wilfred Munslow, twin brother of Geoffrey. His photo is on the reverse.

A short clip of contemporary German newsreel film shows the course of the one sided battle that led to the loss of the Glorious and her escorting destroyers, Acasta and Ardent. Out of a crew of 1564 only 45 survived three days in lifeboats. There were two survivors from each of the destroyers.
For a memorial to a man from Acasta, go here.

The window at Martindale is not the only memorial in Cumbria to honour loss on HMS Glorious. At Gosforth a wooden plaque commemorates 39 year old Lt Commander Austin Noel Rees Keene, R.N. Although retired from the Navy he rejoined on the outbreak of hostilities. He was married to Euphemia Mary Keene and lived at Torphins, Aberdeenshire. However, his parents were the Reverend Rees and Louisa Mary Keene - were they perhaps natives of Gosforth?

Another publication

2009-08-26T15:43:00.006+01:00

Another publication listing names on war memorials has been kindly sent to me by the Matterdale Historical and Archaeological Society.

A labour of love, it describes the men whose names appear on the memorials at Matterdale, Greystoke, Patterdale, Penruddock and Watermillock from both world wars.

One of the great things about these locally produced publications is the anecdotal stories that often appear. The men are often remembered in their communities and stories remain in the memory of friends and family describing their lives and their fates. Such is the case here.

I found myself by the banks of Ullswater yesterday. What a beautiful place. I looked around the Salvin church at Patterdale and found two further memorials commemorating conflicts.

At the west end of the nave there is a White Ensign hanging from the wall.

An accompanying plaque explains that it flew on a despatch boat of HMS Lion, flagship of Sir David Beatty, at the Battle of Jutland. It was presented to the church by Commander Berry RN. Best look at my earlier posting about Beatty's flag at Flookburgh!

Set against the end wall of the nave, below the flag, is a rough wooden table.

It is an altar that was originally in the crypt of St Martin in the Fields, London. It was given to the Lakeland sculptress, Josephina de Vasconcelles who installed it in the chapel of a house in the Duddon Valley that was a refuge for disadvantaged youths. In 1970 it was dedicated by the Bishop of Carlisle as a memorial to all those killed in air crashes in the Lakeland fells from the outbreak of the second world war until today; over 500 people. At the millenium Josephina gave the altar to Patterdale church as a focus of pilgrimage for friends and relatives of the dead.