Impact of The Somme at Wythburn, Thirlmere

A bit less complicated but equally poignant is a simple memorial at Wythburn, Thirlmere. It is always sobering to enter a remote Lakeland church to discover a memorial or a roll with lists of names. Real people. Young men and occasionally women.

The church stands on the fellside to the east of Thirlmere, a reservoir created in 1894 that drowned the cottages and inn of the village of Wythburn along with the surrounding farms and the hamlet of Armboth. 3½ miles long and more than a mile wide, the lake serves as a water supply for Manchester. Only the church first built in 1640, and restored in 1872 remains from the flooded communities. There is a window by Henry Holiday.

The small memorial of local blue slate bears the names of 2 Borderers who were killed within a month of each other in the horror that was the last weeks of The Battle of the Somme. The first to be killed in October 1916 was 12939, Private Joe Sandham of the 8th Battalion. Aged 20, he was the son of Joseph & Mary Jane Sandham of Helvellyn House, Thirlmere. Young Joe was killed in the attack on Moquet Farm - Mucky Farm to Thomas Atkins -and is buried in Stump Road Cemetery, Grandcourt. The picture shows the trench landscape around the farm with shell bursts over the position itself.

Some three weeks later 30152, Private Alfred Bell, 37, was killed at Beaumont Hamel while serving with the 11th (Lonsdale) Bn. He is commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme. 32 Div's attack at Beaumont Hamel was a total mudbath. It rained incessantly for days before and the lads were utterly exhausted before they even reached the start line. Many, including stragglers who all but refused to attack, were slaughtered or gave up in despair. (See Tim Travers, The Killing Ground, pp188-189). Beaumont Hamel is now just another sleepy French village but a focus for pilgrims to the battlefields, especially Newfoundland Park.

World War 2 rolls

Many of the precedents set in the years following the Great War were again adopted after 1945. The creation of rolls was one such. The two illustrated here, Wythburn at the top and Westward below, are examples of the listings of names that were created.

Wythburn roll which covers the parishes of St John in the Vale & Castlerigg with Wythburn is peculiarly antiquated in design, employing a vaguely neo-gothic & Christian iconography that would seem more appropriate to a high Victorian city church than to a isolated lakeland chapel. The names of four dead in the central panel are sanctified by an associated cross in the central altar panel. The considerable number of those who served fill the side panels.

Westward is without symbolism and simply calls itself a Roll of Service. It is similar to Wythburn in the separation of the names of the dead but differs in the gender split and the details of service. Neither is signed though both were probably created by professional or semi-professional illuminators.

I find rolls like this fascinating. They illustrate both differences in the way the two wars were fought and perceptions of service. WW2 rolls have numbers of names of guys who fought and died in the Merchant Marine which are generally lacking in WW1 lists. They also show how the RAF, primarily bomber command, took huge numbers of men away from the Infantry Regiments that dominate earlier rolls. Nor did those that did serve in the infantry serve with 'Pals' type units whose losses cut swathes through local communities in 1916.

A further difference is in the gender of those commemorated. Though there are women named on WW1 rolls, primarily nurses, they do not appear in the same numbers as in the later rolls, a reflection of the growth of the women's armed services.