A statistic

When discussing the losses in the Great War, and specifically those suffered by the industrial communities of the north such as Accrington, the focus is invariably on the Pals Battalions; units raised in local neighbourhoods and often stripping whole streets or factories of young men. However, the appalling losses of such as the Accy Pals at Serre on July 1 1916, were often suffered by territorial units. Maybe not quite so bad, but bad enough.

The graph below shows when the men and boys listed on Ulverston's primary memorial were killed. (August 1914 to December 1918).

The most striking feature is the huge peak of July (14), August (25), September (8), 1916 when the lads were fighting on The Somme. Nothing approaching such a concentrated loss was experienced before or after. Nor should it be forgotten that for every man killed approx 3 would be wounded - thus, with 47 dead, 'Lile Oosten' probably suffered a total of some 200 casualties during this period. 20 of these men were killed in July/August fighting with the 1/4th King's Own, the local Territorial unit that recruited throughout Furness and Cartmel. Indeed in the whole three month period the unit lost 194 men killed and perhaps 500-600 wounded.

These casualties were largely a consequence of the attempt the break the second German line on The Somme at Guillemont. The men of Furness and Cartmel attacked a quarry to the north west of the village from a start line at Arrow Head copse just to the west of 'The Sunken Lane'. They were cut to pieces. A description of this place is contained in Ernst Junger's classic 'Storm of Steel'; as a young German soldier Junger was fighting in The Sunken Lane some weeks after the 1/4th attacked. Check out http://leoklein.com/itp/somme/texts/junger_1929.html . The pic show the site of Guillemont Station some 200 yds north of where the ulverston lads fought. This was a railway station! The village used to be on the horizon!

One of those killed, on 8 August, was John Burrow, Assistant Master in Dalton School. He is buried at Guillemont Rd Cemetery - close to Raymond Asquith, son of Herbert Asquith, Prime Minister in the early years of the war. Raymond's grave is just to the left of the entrance, seen here. John's is at the back of the cemetery.

John Burrow was an old boy of Ulverston Victoria Boy's Grammar and although his name is on the school's memorial his photograph does not seem to appear on the school's photographic roll.

Of all the guys killed in this three month period, July - Sept 1916 and named on Ulverston Cross, one died in Tanzania, one in Iraq, one at Ypres and two at home. The rest were killed on the Somme. 26 have no known grave and are commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial to The Missing of the Somme.

The graph is interesting in other ways. The first peak of casualties (reading from the left) illustrates losses suffered at Festubert in the summer of 1915, shortly after the 1/4th went to France. Also the losses of 1918 (54) approached those of 1916 (69). Indeed for the country as a whole the casualties increased in each year of the war. It is only in small communities, such as Ulverston, that the losses are skewed by the involvement of a territorial or a Pal's Battalion.

Charney Hall, Grange over Sands?

One of the things I keep coming back to is the number of memorials that have either vanished or about which very little is known. A friend of mine recently came up with one at Silverdale, just outside the borders of Cumbria. A Roll of Honour of the men of a local church had at some time in the past been used as a backing board for another more recent picture. It only came to light a few months ago when the picture required cleaning and re-framing.

Another mystery is presented by this photo postcard I recently bought on ebay for a couple of pounds.

The picture clearly shows a building described as 'Charney Hall Memorial Hall'. But where is it? Until the 1970s (I think) there was in Grange over Sands a private preparatory school called Charney Hall. Sadly the entire school complex was subsequently demolished and is now a series of residential buildings.

During the early years of the last century the school was run by George Podmore, who describes himself on the 1901 census as MA Oxon, Private Schoolmaster, with the help of assistant master, George Antrobus . There were some 20 boarders including a number of the Wordsworth family. A number of local gentry families sent their sons here to prepare them for one of the greater public schools. In due course many of these joined the forces and it is thus no suprise to find in Grange parish church a memorial to old boys killed in the Boer War. Indeed, the church also holds the battlefield cross of Hubert Podmore, one of George's four sons, who was killed around Ypres in 1917. See this posting on the Great War discussion forum for exhaustive details of Podmore's carreer.

However, there is no memorial that I am aware of to the old boys who were killed in the Great War. I find that strange and thus wonder whether the above picture is in fact the school's Great War Memorial. A contemporary OS map shows an isolated building to the north east of the main house which seems to have the same shape and plan as the photo.

I have made some rather desultory enquiries in the town but no-one seems terribly interested or to have any memories of the school prior to its demise. But surely the school had a memorial?

A case of mistaken identity at Backbarrow?

Some time ago I had a phone call from a chap in Backbarrow to inform me of a memorial, marked on the Ordnance Survey map, that seemed not only to have disappeared but which nobody in the village had any knowledge of. In doing so he presented me with yet another mystery.

The words 'War Memorial' are quite clearly marked on the 1973 1:10,000 map covering South Lakes at SD 35555 54635.

However, on the First Edition Lancashire sheet 12.2 - 1:2,500 surveyed in 1888 and published in 1890 there is no indication of a memorial but there are the letters 'W.M', very close to where a memorial is indeed marked on the earlier map.

Online conversation with the Charles Close Society, a bunch of map enthusiasts, has confirmed that the letters 'WM' on an OS map normally signifies a weighing machine. But before accepting the fallibility of the Ordnance Survey and entirely abandoning the notion of a memorial it would be good to know what all the other editions of the OS survey of Backbarrow indicate. So if you have any old maps - check it out and let me know!

Day out in Dalton - part 3

The principal Great War memorial in Dalton is set in a small garden on Station Rd on land that was gifted by the Furness Railway Company. In April 1921 the contract for its design was given to Oakley of Barrow.

As often encountered with the construction of memorials there was a deal of discussion around the design and difficulties with finance. In March 1921 a meeting of the War Memorial Committee was rather preoccupied withg the cost of landscaping the site, some £400, against £600 for the memorial itself. At that time £780 had been raised and there was a suggestion from Mr Spencer that 1d be added to the rates, already 3s 6d in the £, to cover the outstanding cost. Councillor Fisher thought such an idea was 'repugnant' and Mrs Layland, secretary, suggested that they should undertake 'yet another appeal to a number of people in the town who were well able to give and who had contributed nothing at all'. In the meantime, however, it was agreed that all the churches in the town be approached to have collections on April 30th, 'Forget-me-not Day', to raise funds for the memorial. It was further agreed that Dalton Urban District Council would maintain it in perpetuity, a task now undertaken by Barrow in Furness District Council.

Just opposite Dalton's memorial is a very nicely proportioned Georgian house, set back behind a large front garden. This is the Conservative Club where there is another memorial, a rather pleasant illuminated item with a picture of King George V, cut from a magazine, as a centrepiece. It is unsigned but must have been put together by a member of the club.

Dalton is a typical example of the diversity of memorialisation after 1914 as various organisations strove to establish their place in the Great Sacrifice as a statement of engagement with local and national endeavours in the war. There is certainly a sense of ownership of the soldiers. Nor is Dalton parts 1.2 & 3 likely to be the totality of memorials; local schools will almost certainly have established rolls of serving men (& women) after 1915 as will the various non-conformist chapels. Whether they survive, in attic or cellar, must remain unknown although I have a memory of a newspaper article in the North West Evening Mail some ten or more years ago (before I began to obsess) describing the discovery of two memorials in an attic in the town. I will try to trace them.

Our former enemies

While spending inordinate amounts of time describing war memorials in Cumbria it is easy to forget the losses of other nations, in Europe and beyond. As war is the universal human condition, so too is the consequent loss; to family, community and country. Thus does each search for appropriate ways to express ideas of service or sacrifice, employing an iconography and language that best expresses national or communal perceptions of purpose; in the case of the Great War the validation of mass death.

I recently bought a job lot of old photos on ebay, among them was this image of the dedication of a war memorial in some anonymous village in Germany or Austria.

A group of rather stereotypical German gentlemen of all ages (no women!) are gathered around a new stone memorial. At the top is a rather modernist figure of a naked man holding a broken sword, gazing heavenwards towards what appears to be a cloud with rays emanating downwards. The dedication in the central panel, above and below the list of names, reads,

Unsere tapferen Gefallenen fur Volk und vaterland zur ehre und zum gedenken.
Die dankbare gemeinde gross besten

I would appreciate a translation!

What does this imagery, somewhat different from British memorials, mean? What does it tell us about post 1919 Germany or Austria?

Day out in Dalton part 2

When I first started looking at Great War memorials for my MA I thought it would be easy; a gentle jaunt round South Lakes taking a few pics, a few hours in the archives and Bingo!! A dissertation! How wrong I was! It soon became obvious that the listing at the IWM, upon which I was basing my research, was terribly incomplete. Great War memorials are everywhere, probably thousands of them, created from 1914 through to the present. Communities erected a multiplicity as individual churches, chapels, schools and businesses laid claim to their citizen soldiers. Dalton in Furness is a typical example. The large memorial on Station Road, to be shown in a later posting, is rightly considered to be the 'Town War Memorial'. But the presence of many others in the town shows that the processes of memorialisation after the Great War were much more complicated than the erection of a single, centralised memorial.

The first Dalton posting describes those in St Mary's parish church, though even this listing is unlikely to be complete - I didn't check every item of furniture, the communion plate, church warden's staffs or even the Bible in daily use. (At Mansergh the Bible used in every service has the names of the WW1 village dead on the fly page).

Beyond St Mary's there are more WW1 memorials. In Dalton castle, owned by the National Trust, there is a large unsigned brass plaque commemorating five men of the Dalton Co-operative Society who died.

It is unlikely to belong here. But where might it be from? In 2001 I received a letter from a long time resident of Dalton who remembered seeing a memorial in the co-operative buildings at the bottom of Chapel Street during the early 1990s. So is it from there? Almost certainly not. The castle's plaque has been in this position for many years; certainly more than twenty. But apparently there were a number of co-operative shops and offices in the town; so was the memorial from one of these? Don't know! Dalton resident required.

I have already posted a pic of Aircraftsman Redhead's memorial in the Methodist church, but this not the only one in that building. There is also a rather imposing marble plaque bearing the names of 16 men who died between 1914 - 1919, and as an afterthought one who died in 1921 'From the effects of the war'. A further 4 are named who died in the second war. (I will return to this interesting memorial in a later posting).

Finally, for the time being, there is a unsigned plaque in St Margaret's Catholic church with the names of 21 men who were killed in the Great War.

These, however, were not Catholics. Until, I think, the 1960s this was an Anglican church which became redundant before being adopted by the town's Catholic community.

Not finished with Dalton yet - there will be more described in part 3!!

Shake loose the border

Another beautiful summer day today, so I took off up the west coast with a friend. After a look around Millom, an astonishingly interesting little town, (reputedly the only place in England with a Salvation Army 'Fortress'!) we made our way to Muncaster. As with so many others the ancient church there is replete with reminders of an ancient history. One memorial was particularly fascinating, a reminder of the turbulent days of border warfare that ravaged Cumberland, Westmorland and Lunesdale for centuries.

In Memory of Will Penyngton Arm(?) whose fyrst Wife was Ioan Wharton daughter of Thom Lord Wharton. His secondde wyffe was Dame Bridgett Askew daughter of Sir Iohn Hudlestone By whom he had 3 sons Joseph John & William.

Will Penyngton & all his tried Horsemen were called out upon Service of the Borders

1543

Iuorum animabus propitiehur dens ani

This brass has a companion, stylistically identical, that is dated 1801. But although retrospective it clearly commemorates the service of William Penyngton in the wars of the 16th century.

On November 24, 1542 William Pennington was with his father in law, Thomas, Lord Wharton, Warden of the English West March, at the Battle of Solway Moss where some 18000 Scots were pretty much trounced by a few thousand Borderers. After the battle Lord Wharton submitted a report to Henry VIII.

And so the Scots after a greatand long chase of our prickers at Akeshawhill [Oakshawhill], returned down towards Artureth howes, and there great numbers then perfectly in our sights and partly as we stood, with their sides towards us burning homeward, and our prickers not pricking because of their ordnance and great powers, they then something homewards, we with six standards, [that is] to say my lord Parre's in the order of my near cousin Walter Strickland and two hundred archers of Kendale with him; my cousin Sir William Musgrave's; my brother-in-law Sir Thomas Curwen's; my cousin and deputy John Lowther's; my son in law William Pennington's; and my own with the number of twelve hundred men or near thereabouts; come over the water of Levyn more than a pace on horseback to Howpsikehill full in the sight of the Scots, and there a little paused on horseback to put the six standards with those men to the most show and safety for the relief of our prickers...

What this is basically saying is that the English raised their standards on a hill above the Scots and faced them out to relieve the 'prickers' who were harassing the Scots army. The 'Prickers' were the men of the English border clans; Grahams, Armstrongs, Hetheringtons & Elliots who, mounted on their sturdy little horses, pricked their foes with their long lances. Seeing the great standards of the border lords raised on the hill above them, the Scots, under a confused and dysfunctional command lost their morale and started to collapse. The subsequent rout was total.

Within weeks the Scots king was dead & his young daughter, Mary, on the throne. In the years that followed Will Pennington was heavily involved in the 'Rough Wooing' that reduced the border to a state of bloody anarchy. Check out the English Heritage link for more information on the battle.