Published with updates and amendments on 20 February 2021 at 10.24am.
Until
I moved to Barnsley in 2003 I knew or cared little about the history of
the First World War (FWW). A step change in my perception of the importance
of the conflict in the history of people I knew and our families came
about once I began investigating my soon to be husband's family history.
One
of the first family history related items that my mother-in-law showed
me, from a box she had carefully kept, was a 'Dead Man's Penny' commemorating her great uncle Walter Clarke
Priestley. He had been the youngest brother of her 'little grandma',
Mary Jane Taylor, née Priestley. The 'medal' had been used as a toy by
subsequent generations, a hole had been made in the top so that a ribbon
or string could be used to hang this 5" diameter solid bronze plaque
around the necks of little Priestleys and Taylors! Sadly since showing me the plaque it has been mislaid, kept safe for decades it may now have fallen behind a cupboard or been buried under other rarely accessed boxes of family memorabilia. So I can't upload a photo of it onto this site.
During my early research I discovered that on my husband's paternal side his great- grandfather, Joseph Croft, had served and survived. I asked my father-in-law about this and he remembered that his grandfather had some fingers missing from one of his hands. He attributed this to the First World War. He knew of and had no interest in other family members who may have served or been killed. In fact he knew very little about his own family. It was necessary to contact his sister in order to progress further with his part of the family tree. I have since noticed that older ladies tend more often to be the custodians of family history, but of course that depends on whether anyone passed the stories to them. Older men have more interest in military history especially if medals, payrolls or other memorabilia have been kept in the family.
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| Joseph Nutley in tropical uniform |
I had been studying my own Durham and Northumberland families for around ten years at this point and had discovered only one First World War fatality. Joseph Nutley, from Howden le Wear, was my great, great uncle. A distant family connection had been able to supply me with his photo, although it appears to have been taken pre-war. When my grandfather, after some prompting, had related what he knew about his family to myself and my mother shortly before his death in 1983, he had not mentioned Joseph's death in the war (as far as I remember or can see from my records), despite him being his own uncle. Even now, with fifteen years experience researching the First World War, I have only discovered only a small number of relatives who served in the war in any capacity, and less than a handful who were killed.
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| An old edition of Jon Cooksey's book |
In
my husband's family tree, I have discovered over a hundred men who
served and twenty four who fell. Twenty of the men served in the
Barnsley Pals, the 13th and 14th battalions of the York and Lancaster
Regiment, including Walter Clarke Priestley, who enlisted in 1915 at
nineteen years of age. Not long after discovering the importance of
these battalions in the history of Barnsley I bought a copy of Jon
Cooksey's 1986 book relating their history. I think this was my first
foray into the detail of the war! I would have been very excited to find
Walter Clarke Priestley's name listed at the back of the book. Also
listed was Reginald Leslie Duncan, a much more distant relative, but
with such a distinctive name I had speedily found him on the CWGC site
once I knew of his existence. He was killed on the First Day of the
Battle of the Somme, a massive (or so you would have thought) event in
the history of Barnsley. Sadly I soon discovered that outside families
with direct connections to the various war memorials around the borough
few knew about their ancestors' involvement, or even of their deaths in
the war.
The Service and Pension records of First World War soldiers were released online by Ancestry in 2007.
Before this it had really only been possible to research with ease men
who had fallen in the war using the Commonwealth War Graves Commission's
site. Although the medal cards had been available on Ancestry for some
time unless the man's name was quite unusual it was difficult to be sure
that the card you had found referred to your man. Prior to that I do
remember a lengthy trip to Kew, to The National Archives, to search
through the microfilmed versions of the Service Records for Bunns and
Fiddlers, the most uncommon names on my own family tree. I had found
nothing.
My
own ancestors were miners, ship builders and farm workers, and most of
my direct ancestors were simply the wrong age to volunteer or be
conscripted. My paternal grandfather Edward (Barney) Hall had served in
India in the 1930s, and my father, when pressed, showed me his medals.
He also recalled that there was a family rumour that his own maternal
grandfather, Henry Bunn, had lost a finger in the First World War,
possibly even self inflicted. He had never mentioned these stories to me before.
The difference between my own family's remembrance of the war and that of my husband's maternal family is quite stark. There was even a difference between the retained memories of my husband's paternal family and his maternal family.
Since I created the Barnsley's History - The Great War Facebook page and was able to promote it via other local history Facebook pages I have engaged over 1,000 people who have expressed an interest in the First World War (FWW). I ask two questions as part of the process of joining the site in order to prevent bots or spammers from gaining access. The question about interest in the FWW, when answered, is frequently that a great-grandfather or great-uncle served or was killed in the war. Other people say that they want to know more about the war as general interest in the history of Barnsley. Recent posts have included photos of soldiers, a paybook, pension record cards, some medals and a Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) gravestone.
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| CWGC gravestone at Cudworth |
That highlights another aspect of Barnsley's FWW history that many people are unaware of. Hundreds of Barnsley men who served in the war returned home wounded or sick and are buried in cemeteries in the area, usually marked by one of the distinctive white gravestones. A project in Darfield mapped all of the CWGC gravestones and war memorial gravestones (where a man is remembered rather than buried) in their churchyard, but there are more in their cemetery too. In September 2016, as part in a national project called 'Living Memory', the Cudworth Local History and Heritage Group mapped the CWGC gravestones in the churchyard there, ending with a little public tour of part of the churchyard telling the stories of some of the men.
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| Barnsley Chronicle 17 Sep 2016 |
Several of the people from Cudworth who toured the cemetery that day commented that they had not been aware of the CWGC gravestones before, or what they meant. The fact that the images at the top of the stones were regimental badges was also something that several of them had not realised. Bear in mind that most of these people had come along to the tour because they were interested in history already.
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| The centre spread of the Cudworth churchyard plan |
As was the case for the Cudworth Local History and Heritage Group the recent Centenary of the FWW might have been expected to increase interest in the war in Barnsley, but if it has, it has not increased the knowledge of most of the 1,000 people who have joined my Facebook page. When the Barnsley Pals book was featured a number of people recommended it, but most were very interested and asked how to access a copy. When the Barnsley War Memorials Project's Roll of Honour was featured a number of people searched the site, which they had not been aware of before, for photographs of their relatives. Note that this is at least two years after the book and the website were launched and advertised in the Barnsley Chronicle. People were not aware that the book was available in all the branch libraries around the borough.
This is not to say that everyone on the site has no knowledge of the war, I am very pleased to report that some experts on the war are members of the site and are happy to pass on their knowledge to the other members.
One conversation on the Facebook page showed that many people did not understand that men volunteered to serve early in the war, or that regular soldiers and slightly later Territorial soldiers entered a theatre of war long before the Barnsley Pals. Conversely others were not aware of conscription from early 1916 onwards, stating that despite a general interest they 'had no-one who had been involved'. As I used to explain at my talks (before I became too ill to be able to commit to them anymore) if people had an ancestor in the correct age cohort, 18 to 50 by the end of the war, then they were very, very likely to have been involved. A few long threads have discussed the way the Barnsley Pals fitted into the existing regimental structure. They were the 13th and 14th Service battalions of the York and Lancaster regiment. 'Service' in their title means that they were raised especially to serve in the FWW. The Barnsley Territorials were the 1st/5th battalion of the York and Lancaster regiment and they were called to active service as soon as the war began.
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| Somme coverage in the Barnsley Chronicle 21 October 2016 |
Many Barnsley men served in other regiments and the coverage of the Battle of the Somme by the Barnsley Chronicle newspaper in July to November 2016 tried to raise awareness of all the Barnsley men killed in that battle, not just the Barnsley Pals. A list of the men killed 100 years ago that week was published in the newspaper throughout the period of the Battle. As you can see from the image on the left the Chronicle made a great deal of effort to get the details of the men included in the pieces.
One of my aims with the Facebook page and my three blogs is to raise awareness of Barnsley's part in the FWW and to show how war memorials can be just the start of an exploration of the family and social history of our area. This is not just to assist other people in their research but also to try to uncover the memories of the war that may have been passed down through Barnsley families and to record them before they are lost.
References:
Ancestry, https://www.ancestry.co.uk/ (accessed February 2021)
A Barnsley Historian's View, http://barnsleyhistorian.blogspot.com
Barnsley & District War Memorials, http://www.barnsleywarmemorials.org.uk
Barnsley Chronicle, Barnsley Archives and Local Studies, Barnsley Town Hall.
Barnsley's History - the Great War, https://www.facebook.com/groups/425720354266452 (accessed February 2021)
Barnsley WW1 Roll of Honour, https://barnsleyremembersww1.home.blog/ (accessed 20 February 2021)
Big Ideas, Living Memory, https://www.big-ideas.org/project/living-memory/ (accessed 20 February 2021)
Cooksey, J. Barnsley Pals: The 13th and 14th Battalions York and Lancaster Regiment (Barnsley: Pen & Sword, [1986] 2016)