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There is a great deal of information about Commemoration and Remembrance in Barnsley in the Archives and Local Studies Libraries in South and West Yorkshire.
Barnsley Archives and Local Studies
Sheffield Archives
Rotherham Archives
Wakefield Archives
Doncaster Archives
A great deal of the original information collected by the Barnsley War Memorials Project (BWMP) has been deposited in Barnsley Archives as folders of information or as electronic information on CD. The work of the was the foundation for this research, as I was one of the original Committee members from 2014 to 2016. After the project was wound down at the end of 2019 myself and one other ex-committee member took on the project website, renamed it and announced our intention to continue collecting information about Barnsley's war memorials for as long as we could.
The BWMP did not investigate the process or motivations behind the war memorial projects, the volunteers main aim was to create a record of war memorials and to discover the names of Barnsley people who lost their lives in war.
As each of the memorials were recorded and photographed volunteers researched the names inscribed thereon. Nearly 4,000 names of men and women who were killed, were declared missing, or who died from wounds or illness resulting from war service were recorded by the BWMP and a Roll of Honour was created in 2018. Copies of the Roll of Honour were donated to Barnsley Archives and to every library in the Barnsley area.
The names of men who served also appear and these were also recorded. Various other projects, transcription of the Absent Voters' List, indexing of the Barnsley Chronicle, were carried out by the volunteers towards the aim of finding the names of as many of the people affected by the war as possible. As each of these projects were completed their results were deposited in Barnsley Archives.
The BWMP sought the assistance of the public to provide information on the names on the memorials. At the end of the Centenary period there were still about 190 names which it had been impossible to identify.
Example of way in which the BWMP website was used to seek information:
The Roll of Honour in Darfield Village Club
contains 38 individual photos of men who served in WW1 and the BWMP created two photo galleries in the hopes that someone will find their
great-grandfather or other relative, get in touch and help research the men.
- Part A-M 20 individual photos of WW1 soldiers
- Part P-W another 18 photos of Darfield men who served in WW1
The
The Archives listed above have online catalogues but only a small portion of their holdings are listed upon them. From 2018 onwards there was a project in Barnsley Archives to catalogue the records of Non-conformist churches held by the Archives. I expect this to produce papers concerning war memorials as they were installed in most of the churches and chapels across the district.
The lists of men's names found in local Archives, in documents and newspapers do not constitute war memorials themselves, by the definitions of the Imperial War Museum War Memorials Register and the UK War Memorials sites. However the records can give valuable information the existence of memorials which have now been lost, provide clues about the whereabouts of memorials that can then be photographed and researched, and about the men who served and died leading to discoveries about the local communities and the reasons men where included or omitted from memorials.
Sometimes interesting information about the planning of a memorial is discovered. Committee minutes and reports of meetings in newspapers give the names of the Committee members and often their occupations (from which their social class can be defined).
Barnsley Archives
Absent Voters Lists (AVL) for Barnsley created in 1918 and 1919 which list men who were expected to be away from home at the time of the elections in those years. Some of these lists include the service numbers and regiments of the men.
The Barnsley Town Centre 1918 AVL was transcribed by the volunteers of the BWMP during the Centenary.
- Barnsley Town Centre and neighbouring townships
- Hemsworth District - includes Cudworth, Shafton, Great Houghton
- Wentworth District - includes ...
- Penistone District - includes ...
The History of All Saints Church, Darton
By James Dearnley (completed 1946 – he began writing in 1935)
Darton
war memorial has no names inscribed on it - so the church warden
collected as many names as he could from other sources to include in his
history of the church.
Sources for Farrar Street Congregational Church
- List of "Old Scholars Killed on Active Service" from the 1919 'Coming of Age' Souvenir booklet for the Church. Names of 6 men killed.
- 1915 Church Christmas Card listing 34 names on a Roll of Honour
- Entry in the Church Minutes for 10 August 1920 giving the names of 9 men who were to be listed on their war memorial. Later it was decided to list no names.
Wakefield Archives
Minutes of the Woolley War Memorial Committee
- Minutes book of meetings from 1920 to 1950
- Accounts
- Roll of Honour of men who Served in the First World War
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