The world’s first online war memorial?

Long-time WFA member Steve Metcalfe, who joined the association in the early 1990s, has shared a project that predates many of the internet’s best-known Great War resources.

In October 1996, Steve launched The Northallerton Memorials Project (northallertonmemorials.org.uk). Hand-coded in Notepad using HTML 1.0, the site records the names inscribed on the war memorials of Northallerton and its neighbouring parishes in the Vale of Mowbray, North Yorkshire. It covers Northallerton itself – whose Celtic cross in All Saints’ Churchyard lists 97 names from the First World War and 41 from the Second World War – along with Romanby, which has a Grade II listed stone clock tower memorial, and Brompton, where the names of the fallen appear on the lych gate of St Thomas’ Church.

The site goes well beyond a list of names. Steve has been researching service records and personal biographies for those commemorated since 1994, and fellow long-standing WFA member Tony Eaton has compiled detailed records for the Second World War. The site’s blue-themed Second World War pages acknowledge the sacrifice of the No. 6 (Canadian) Bomber Group, based at nearby airfields and commemorated by an inscription on the Northallerton memorial. The site was updated in 2025 and migrated to a modern platform to keep the stories and memory of these men alive and accessible.

To put the 1996 launch date in context: the Great War internet barely existed. Pioneers like Tom Morgan (Hellfire Corner) and Chris Baker (The Long, Long Trail) were building general history resources, but Steve’s may have been the first site dedicated to a specific community’s memorials. The Wayback Machine only began archiving in late 1996, and many early hobbyist pages have long since vanished, so verifying the claim is difficult.

Please explore The Northallerton Memorials Project. If you know of a community-specific memorial site that predates October 1996, we’d love to hear from you.