Search results for Memorial.

A Village Goes to War. A History of the Men of Ravensthorpe who Fell in the Great War

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Western Front Association Development Trustee and Vice-Chairman David Tattersfield has researched the names on the memorial in his local church in Ravensthorpe, West Yorkshire. Fortunately, three large frames of photographs had also been preserved - a most unusual occurrence - covering 81 of the 114 names on the memorial. At the time of the Great W…


First World War Memorial to the Portuguese

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These Memorial Windows were designed and created by Caroline Benyon, Fellow of the Master Glass Painters.  They are a First World War Memorial to the Portuguese, and they are to be found in the Roman Catholic Church of St James, 61 Pope's Grove, Twickenham.  The window to the right commemorates the humanitarian work of Dom Manuel II, the last K…


A training exercise goes horribly wrong: The tragedy at Gainsborough, 19 February 1915

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At the turn of the last century the Heavy Woollen area of the West Riding of Yorkshire, centred around Dewsbury, was a hive of industrial activity, specialising in the production of heavyweight cloth. One of the main activities in the town was the production of Shoddy and Mungo - this involved the recycling of wool from rags. In 1860, the adjoining…


Lewes War Memorial by Dr Graham Mayhew

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Erected in 1922, following a design competition judged by the Slade Professor of Fine Art at Cambridge University, Lewes War Memorial stands twenty-seven feet high in the middle of Lewes High Street, at the top of School Hill. Its Portland Stone obelisk is topped by a bronze winged victory looking straight down the hill. At its foot are two more …


Lewes and the Great War : January Casualties

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By the end of autumn 1914 the German advance on Paris had been halted and both sides had dug in for the winter, creating a system of opposing trenches separated by waste ground known as 'no man’s land', stretching from the Channel coast to the Swiss border. This was what became known as the Western Front. Until the German breakthrough during their …


Aubers Ridge 9 May 1915

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  At the end of April 1915 the Sussex Express carried a cheering report from one of its former reporters, Private W G Horton of the 5th Royal Sussex. Seated on a straw bale in “glorious sunshine” at a rest billet 10 miles from the Front, he expressed the optimism of Lewes’s territorials on a beautiful spring day, that the war would soon be over an…


The Hong Kong and Singapore Mountain Battery in Egypt, Sinai and Palestine

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In 1847 the British authorities in Hong Kong began using Indians as gun lascars, or general workers, because the climatic conditions were unsuitable for white soldiers, and also because Indians were much more economical to employ and to administer. The practice spread throughout the British possessions in the Far East and by 1908 all the gunners we…


The Prince and the Pilot

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On a windswept hill overlooking the Yorkshire mill town of Halifax stands the area's most visible landmark: the Wainhouse tower. This is a Victorian-era construction and a 'folly'. It was, theoretically, built as a chimney for a local industrialist's factory, but it was never used as such. Above: The Wainhouse Tower at dusk.  Adjacent to the Wa…


Lewes Casualties : September 1918 and the impact of 'Spanish Flu'

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  September 1918 brought a further 14 Lewes casualties, 10 on the Western Front where the arrival of the Americans had helped change the balance of forces firmly towards the Allied side and four others, one from Baku on the Caspian Sea, one from a submarine attack off Brittany, one the result of tuberculosis and one from influenza. Private Albert…


A Tour of Mesopotamian War Cemeteries in 2003

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In the early summer of 2003, fortunately or not, I found myself and the Battalion I was commanding at the time, 7 Air Assault Battalion REME, based just outside of Al-Amarah in what had once been the British front line in Mesopotamia. Wherever I am in the world if there is an opportunity to visit a CWGC site then I will. A quick look on the map and…


From the Archives: Lost and found in France

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This is a story of two great French artefacts: one lost and one found. In an edition of the WFA Bulletin of October 1992 a short item appeared under the heading ‘Returned to Albert’. It was accompanied by an image of a damaged work of religious art. The shrapnel damaged painting returned to Albert The painting is one of the fourteen Stations o…


The Abandoned St Quentin Memorial to the Missing

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In 1926 the French government raised serious concern at the number of free-standing memorials being proposed by the Imperial War Graves Commission (IWGC) to honour the missing  and among those to be sacrificed would be the one planned for St Quentin. It was a challenge to create the necessary number of structures to carry the many names of the m…


Great War Barcombe News from a Sussex Village 1914 -1919

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Publisher: Country BooksISBN: 9781910489611 Edited by Ian Hilder Five years in post as the Digital Editor for The Western Front Association (since May 2015) and one of the regular and most enjoyable and indulgent tasks is to research and refresh our daily commemoration of the men or women who served during the First World War for ‘Remember On Thi…


Eton Street 'Shrine' in Hull and the loss of the Earl

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At the corner of Eton Street and Hessle Road in Hull stood until recently a branch of the Yorkshire Bank. As with most cities, the closure of bank branches has accelerated in recent years leading to further declines in local services. This is nothing new - this area of Hull has been subject to changes and ‘slum clearances’. It was during these c…


The Sculpture of Charles Sergeant Jagger by Ann Compton

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Henry Moore Foundation, in association with Lund Humphries, 2004.  Hardback, 144pp., £60.  ISBN 0 85331 8646 In 1985, the Imperial War Museum held an exhibition entitled 'Charles Sergeant Jagger - War and Peace Sculpture, 1885- 1985'. There had been no major exhibition of Jagger's work since the memorial show organised in 1935, the year after hi…


Sir John Edward Fowler – the Last Repatriation from The Western Front in 1915?

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By April 1915 the exhumation of bodies from the Western Front and their repatriation was banned.   Historian Richard van Emden identifies the last ‘official’ case of repatriation of a fallen British soldier to be that of Lieutenant William Gladstone, the grandson of former Prime Minister William Gladstone. This took place in April 1915, nine da…


From ceremonial duties to First Ypres and beyond: The 1st Life Guards and their single worst day of the war

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This is a brief account of one cavalry regiment's war which reached its nadir in unlikely circumstances whilst they were in a supposedly safe location on the French coast re-training for a new role. The story starts and ends at Etaples Military Cemetery. The cemetery is – as those who have visited it – a vast and (for its size) relatively rarely v…


Bushmills  Heroes 1914 -1918 by Robert Thompson

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204pp, ills. £10.00 (2005 pricing) (Copies available from the author) ISBN 0- 9537583-3-8 by Robert Thompson  [This review first appeared in Stand To!  No. 73 April 2005] Now in its second edition, Bushmills Heroes, offers valuable memorial essays to some 90 or so men from the area killed during the Great War. The diligence of its author, editor…


The Baralong Incident 29 January 1917

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The Baralong was a 'three island' tramp steamer built in 1901 by Armstrong & Whitworth. She was requisitioned by the Navy in 1914 intended as a supply ship but in early 1915 was identified as a potential decoy ship. Modification works to equip her for this role, including the installation of three concealed twelve pounder guns, were carried out…


The R38 disaster 24 August 1921

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At the start of the war, in contrast to Germany, the British had limited experience of airships. Under the Royal Naval Air Service there were only a handful of airships in service but with increasing U-Boat activity and the resultant impact on shipping, the Navy began to further develop its use of airships to counter the U-Boat threat. The R.38 c…


HMS Zubian: A Tale of Two Halves

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On 15 February 1907 the first of the new Tribal Class destroyers, HMS Cossack, was launched and over the following two-and-a-half years she was followed by another eleven sister-ships.  The last of them, HMS Zulu, was launched on 16 September 1909 and commissioned in the following March.  At 285 feet long (86.9m), with a beam of 27 feet (8.2m) and …


Farnham in the Great War by Maurice Hewins

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Printed and bound by Print2Demand Ltd. 17cm x 24cm 202 pages When I was asked to read and review Maurice Hewin's Farnham in the Great War I jumped at the chance. Having struggled myself to produce a history of the men of Rowledge who fell in the Great War, I knew only too well that the source of material for any work relating to that period was …


Leeds Pals Memorial

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The Yorkshire Dales can be one of the most picturesque spots in the UK. They can also be cold, windswept, wet and inhospitable. On the road out of Masham (pronounced Massam), which is a small town north of Ripon, are a couple of reservoirs, Leighton and Roundhill. The first of these – Roundhill – was commissioned by Harrogate Corporation in the ve…


A talk by Sarah Nathaniel, Commonwealth War Graves South East ' The CWGC: A deeper look'

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Sarah Nathaniel is the Public Engagement Coordinator for the CWGC in the South East Region.  Her role covers Kent, East and West Sussex.  She is one of eleven, covering the whole country. Sarah's introduction to the Western Front was on a tour in 2004 with a group of other young people.  The cemeteries made a particular impact in the visitors and …