A country churchyard

Most churches and churchyards in the county have multiple memorials of one sort or another. That at Whicham, a little chapel tucked beneath the slopes of Black Combe, has more than most.

Best known perhaps for having the grave of Tom Mayson, a local man who won the Victoria Cross at Passchendaele in 1917, it hosts a number of other memorials that illustrate the ubiquity of loss in the conflicts of the twentieth century.

Three unknown merchant seamen are buried here, their place marked with Commonwealth War Graves Commission headstones. Two of them share a common grave and must have been found on the beach off Silecroft on the same day in April 1941. They are a stark reminder of the Battle of the Atlantic during which long campaign over 50,000 merchant seamen of many nations perished, their bodies occassionally thrown up by the ocean and given anonymous burial. The courage, commitment & tenacity of those remarkable men is rarely acknowledged.

Check out http://www.gordonmumford.com/m-navy4.htm and the Tower Hill memorial on the CWGC website for the endless lists of 35,808 names.

Next to this are two further CWGC headstones marking the graves of two Australian airmen, 27 year old Corporal Clifford Amos of South Australia & A/C John Francis aged 22 of New South Wales. Both were crew members of a Short Sunderland flying boat of number 10 squadron RAAF that came down in the sea off Anglesey. Their bodies were washed up at Silecroft some time later.

On the south side of the church is a plot belonging to the Caddy - Huddlestone family that contains a family headstone and two more CWGC graves. The earlier war grave is that of Private Tom Caddy who, having served with the Machine Gun Corps, died of the effects of gas poisoning in March 1920. The later one is that of his nephew, Sgt Tom Huddlestone, Wireless Operator/Air Gunner, RAF, who died on October 2, 1944 aged 19. On the family headstone is the name of Annie May Huddlestone, nee Caddy, sister of one, mother of the other.

Inside the church are three memorials, one each for the world wars and a copy of the citation for Tom Mayson's VC. The orginal was, unbelievably, stolen in the early 1990s.

Keswick School @ Dacre

One of the most prolific creators of Great War memorials in the county was the Keswick School of Industrial Arts, an initiative of Canon Hardwicke Rawnsley, vicar of St Kentigern’s Church, Crosthwaite & an early champion of the Lake District (see High Wray, below).

The School was based on principals established by John Ruskin and the Arts & Crafts movement of ‘truth to nature’ and honest craftsmanship as a reaction to burgeoning industrialisation . Classes for metalwork were initially held in the Crosthwaite parish rooms offering instruction in drawing, design, and woodcarving and was sufficiently successful that in 1893 a dedicated workshop was constructed with a grant from the County Council and private donations. It soon acquired a reputation for high quality copper and silver decorative metalwork and in the following decades the School, under the management of a committee of Trustees, evolved into a successful commercial metalwork enterprise employing full time craftsmen as well as providing classes. Early work was influenced by the Celtic and Norse heritage of the Lake District, a period enthusiastically espoused by Rawnsley and his circle, specifically WG Collingwood. By the end of the nineteenth century and following the appointment of Robert Hilton as director in 1904, Art Nouveau and the simpler Arts and Crafts style came to prominence. It is these styles that dictate the form of most war memorials.

Apart from the marble frame, which is an unusual addition, the example here at Dacre is typical. It has clean and formal lines with little embellishment and the letters are created using a
technique known as repoussé. This requires a design to be drawn on the back of a blank piece of metal, generally copper or brass. Having been softened with heat the blank is then held on a bed of warmed pitch which supports the metal and yet is soft enough to receive the impressions formed by a series of punches. The three main tools used are the round raising punch for the main design, the tracing punch for ‘chasing’ outlines from the front of the piece, and the finishing punch for smoothing down the background of the design.

The popularity of these designs is perhaps a consequence of the appointment of George Atholl Weeks as Director who together with Eleanor Rawnsley, Canon Rawnsley's widow, set out to re-invigorate the School in the post-war years. In 1925 Weeks married the daughter of G.D. Abraham, author, climber and photographer who opened the shop, "The New Enterprise" in Lake Road retailing the work of the school. Total sales for 1925 were higher than in any year since 1913.

Keswick School designs normally have a stamped monogram, 'K S I A', in the bottom right hand corner. Due to competition from cheap imports and changing tastes the school closed in 1984 .

A Crimean Memorial

Although the most familiar memorials commemorate the events of 1914-18 & 1939-45 there are many others that owe their existence to obscure and long forgotten events in the country's history.

In Gosforth church there is a large marble plaque describing the death of Captain Charles Allan Parker, Royal Marines, who was killed during during the Crimean War (1853-56) fought between Russia and an alliance of Britain, Turkey, France & Sardinia. Though the principal and most memorable events of this absurd & tragic conflict took place on the Crimean Peninsula on the north coast of the Black Sea, most famously the charge of the Light Brigade, there were other less well known encounters, principally naval actions aimed at disrupting Russia's Far Eastern trade routes. One was at Kamtschatka (Kamchatka) on Russia's Pacific seaboard.

On August 28, 1854 a small force of four British and French warships under the command of Rear Admiral David Price entered Avalska Bay on the south-west coast of the Kamchatka peninsula, at the head of which lies the small town of Petropaulovski (now Petropavlovski). Two days later the allied force commenced firing on Russian batteries in the town, but this was suspended when Admiral Price went into his cabin on HMS President and for no apparent reason shot himself! Following the unfortunate man's burial at Tarinski Bay, the action was resumed on September 4th with the landing of 700 allied seamen and marines under the command of Captain Burridge of the President and de La Grandiere of the French ship Eurydice. They were assisted by one of a group of American whalers who had deserted their ships and joined up with the Brits while they were burying their suicidal commander. Although there was some initial success in silencing the Russian batteries the party ran into an ambush on the hill above the town and in an attempt to break through Captain Charles Parker was killed leading a charge. There was some question as to whether the American ally had deliberately led them into an ambush - mmmh! Bit of blue on blue - and they're still at it!. After some deliberation the party called off the attack and returned to their ships. British and French casualties numbered some 208. I imagine the dead were buried in a grave pit somewhere close to shore. Four days later, after burning a Russian transport, the rather dispirited group sailed away.

For a fuller description of this and other similar actions see; http://www.pdavis.nl/Russia2.htm .

Overlooked by a towering and still active volcano, Petropavlovski remains an important base for Russia's eastern fleet and a quick look at Google Earth will show a number of facilities, including floating docks and significant storage facilities. It also illustrates what a God forsaken piece of desolation this place is - but a small patch must be 'Forever England'!

Cumbrians in Canada

Before 1914 many young guys from Cumbria emigrated to the colonies, and judging by the names on war memorials primarily to Canada. Quite a few of them were miners, maybe tempted by the hope of prospecting for gold following the Klondyke Gold Rush of the 1890s. But there were also considerable numbers of professional men who left the hills of Lakeland to make a new life.

At St Martin's church, Bowness on Windermere, there is a fine memorial window to 163, Lance Corporal James Everett Bownass, Princess Pat's Light Infantry. An Associate of the Royal Insitute of British Architects and the son of John Titterington & Bessie Bownass of Grove House, Windermere, his attestation papers show that he joined the Canadian army in Ottowa on August 24, 1914, just a couple of weeks after the outbreak of war. He was killed in action aged 32 near Ypres on May 8, 1915.

The impressive window, signed by A K Nicholson shows (l to r) the first depiction in England of the canonised Joan of Arc, St Martin & St George. Beneath these imposing figures are three panels depicting the ruined cathedral at Ypres, an explosion on the battlefield with a white dove rising from it - presumably the boy's soul - and an angel holding a wreath, signifying victory over death. It is one of a number of memorial windows in the church. There is also a quite amazing war memorial chapel, entirely furnished with articles given in memory of fallen soldiers.

Before moving across the pond, James, ARIBA, had served some time with the Middlesex Yeomanry. In death he became another of the missing, his name is engraved on the Menin Gate.

There are other Canadian soldier's pictures on the Roll at Ulverston Victoria. Among these is 523248, Gunner Alan Miles. Aged 25 and married to Ethel Helena he joined up in Calgary on April 18, 1916. The Grammar School magazine for Christmas 1916 lists him as serving with the Canadian Mounted police but subsequent issues have him as a Gunner. Although his attestation papers state that he was born at Cark in Cartmel, the 1901 census suggests that it was Egton cum Newland, probably at Mount Pleasant where his family was then living. His father, Harvey, aged 64, was a Norwich man who earned his living as a 'stone carver' & two of his four sisters were employed as domestic servants. He did well to obtain a place at Ulverston Grammar School, probably through a supported scholarship; his parents must have been proud of him.

He survived the war, presumably his grandkids are over in Canada somewhere, unaware that Grandfather's pic is now on the web!

Both of these guys had engaged in military service before the Great War. Bownass had served for two years with the Middlesex Yeomanry and Miles two years with the Westmorland and Cumberland Yeomanry. Such Territorial service was popular in late Victorian & Edwardian England, it gave young guys a chance to get away from home with their mates and play soldiers and it fitted well into an ethos of service to King and Empire promoted by the 'muscular Christianity' of the pre-war church establishment.

Beattie & Co, masons of Carlisle

Following the armistice of November, 1918 communities throughout Britain set up committees to debate the manner in which men's service and death should be commemorated. As is self evident from surviving examples the most popular by far, when it could be afforded, was the monumental memorial. Though some folk were able to approach local architects such as Harry Paley, WG Collingwood or Curwen of Kendal & Heversham for a one-off design, many simply approached local monumental masons whose services had been employed for years in the production of family headstones and grave markers. Firms such as Beattie of Carlisle and James Swallow of Windermere were probably swamped by demand but, for a couple of years, the creation of war memorials was very lucrative for these small businesses . The advertisement shown here, from the Carlisle Diocesan Calendar of 1920, suggests the importance of such contracts. Nice to see them describing themselves as 'sculptors'; don't know what the artistic elite would make of that!

As the advertisement states, examples of Beatties' work is evident in cemeteries and churches throughout the north of Cumbria and they would have been a natural choice for many of these towns and villages, as Swallow was in central Lakeland. Indeed, it is easy to pick out Beattie's memorials by the prominence given to martial symbols or trophies. They are almost a trademark. In the case of Aikton, shown here, a 'tin hat' and an Officer's sword. The firm generally signed their memorials rather discreetly on the lowest step or course of stonework at the rear of the memorial.

The picture on the advert shows a guy working on the memorial for Botchergate, Carlisle. The company is still going, from premises on Warwick Road.

An unknown couple

Picked this up for 50p at a local antique fair this weekend. I always think it's so sad when you see these pics and there is absolutely no indication of who they are. This was in a box with a bunch of postcards that appear to be from a home somewhere in South Lakes, maybe Coniston area but it could be anywhere. Someone's Grandad probably. And what a story he could probably tell, not only of the war but of life.

All the picture tells me is that he was probably in a Corps; Service Corps, Royal Engineers or Artillery & a married man it seems, unless it's his sister.

Maybe someone will recognise him.

Dundraw Mission memorial, Waverton, Wigton

The photograph below shows two memorials in the former mission church at Dundraw, built in 1901 in the parish of Waverton, Wigton. The larger, white marble plaque commemorates the men of Dundraw and district who died in the Great War & the smaller brass those who died in WW2.

Though closed as a church in 1965 the building continued in use as a village hall until the early 1990s. In 2007 the Parochial Church Council asked Duncan Stuart, a local architect, for a professional opinion as to the best way to develop the building. Having decided on holiday accommodation Mr Stuart felt that it was essential to find a new location for these fine local memorials. As a consequence they were relocated to Waverton, Christchurch.

 The two memorials and a further plaque with four names taken from Waverton memorial which stands outside the church were mounted on oak which had 200 holes drilled in it for poppies or other mementos. The whole was rededicated on Remembrance Sunday, 2007.

(Thanks Duncan for these excellent pics and putting me straight on detail)