First published 29 May 2020
The Brampton Parish Hall Roll of Honour
is a framed pre-printed paper Roll of Honour (RoH) filled with 100
names of men from the area who served in the First World War. It is on
display in the Parish Hall on Knoll Beck Lane in Brampton, but no-one
knows for which local organisation it was originally drawn up. My
suggestions have included the local school or the Methodist Chapel, and
at a meeting on 8th March 2020 in the Parish Hall local historians
suggested it was a precursor to the Cortonwood Colliery 'Centotaph'
which was relocated to a little park beside the Parish Hall when the
Colliery was closed in 1985-86. In an aside, two of the men who
attended the meeting had been part of the group who rescued the memorial
using colliery equipment and moved it to Knoll Beck Lane and they were
able to show us some fantastic photographs of that project.
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| Relocation of the Cortonwood Colliery War Memorial (with thanks to the local historians I met on 8 March 2020) |
My research over the past few months
has shown that the Brampton Parish Hall RoH is very unlikely to have
been a provisional listing for the Cortonwood memorial, as only 56 or 58
(including some possibles with common surnames) of the 100 names on the
Roll of Honour also appear on the Cortonwood Colliery Memorial.
Fifty-six is not many out of the 592 names listed on that memorial. The
Cortonwood memorial lists hundreds of men who served as well as 94 who
fell.
A list of 21 men from the Cortonwood Methodist Chapel has been discovered online
(see above). Although this list is titled a 'Roll of Honour' all the
names included are of men who were lost in the war. Eighteen of those
included are also listed on the Brampton Parish Hall RoH. Oddly one of
the other three, and remember this is a man who lost his life, is a
brother of a man who IS named on the Brampton RoH. Both brothers are
listed on the Methodist document, so why one brother is present on the
Brampton Parish Hall RoH and the other is not is yet another mystery
awaiting a solution. The Brampton RoH lists 22 men who fell which means
that four of them are NOT listed on the Methodist document. This
suggests the the Brampton RoH did not originate in the Methodist Chapel.
Since starting this research I have found four more men from the area, which I suggest is closely related to the Concrete Cottages and Wombwell Junction areas,
who are not named on the Roll of Honour, but who did definitely serve
in the First World War. Including the man mentioned above two of these
four men are brothers of men listed and another is possibly a cousin.
This suggests that a thorough search of local sources such as the 1918
and 1919 Electoral Registers of the area (available on Ancestry.co.uk),
which indicate men who were serving by the notation NM, might reveal
even more names of men from the Concrete Cottages and Wombwell Junction
who were not included on the RoH.
I
have cross-checked the 100 names on the Brampton Parish Hall RoH with a
number of other war memorials in the area including the Cortonwood
memorial mentioned above and also memorials in Wombwell, Wath and
Brampton itself. Some names appear on one, some on another, some on
more than one. There is no pattern. The original source of the Brampton
Parish RoH remains a mystery.