YOUR VILLAGE / TOWN MEMORIAL

Introduction:

  After the end of WW1 a new phenomena appeared on village greens, market square's and churchyards in every town village and hamlet in the UK. This was the war memorial, up till then such things were unknown, this was that this is the first war that the civilians had become actively involved in and the country wanted to remember the sacrifice made. The memorials come in all shapes and sizes, the inscriptions vary, one thing is common, they were all designed for the 14-18 war. Then another war came out and you find that these original memorials were altered in some way to accomodate the new names, sadly in many cases the surnames from the two wars were the same as yet another generation of a family was killed off. I researched the war memorials of two areas, one was the town where I live now -Ashford in Kent and the town I was born and grew up Sittingbourne and Milton Regis, two towns now merged also with a merged memorial. the purpose of this was serveral fold, firstly to find out who these men were ,I didn't know them, where, when and how did they die? also to find out when was the deadliest part of the war. To do this I had to research the memorial, I will describe how I researched Ashfords as it was most difficult, but will make references to Sittingbourne where appropriate.

Straight to my conclusions about my memorials researched

Research:

1, Firstly take a photo of the memorial so that all the names are readable, then sit down and write out all the names as the are put on the memorial. Ashford had only surname and initials. Some memorials give regiments and ranks which can point you in the right direction but can be misleading. I have seen memorials that list a man and a regiment, when researched the man only enlisted in that regiment but was transfered and killed elsewhere. This is common. You should now have a list of all the men you want to research.

2, Next go around town and try to look at all the other memorials, I found one in every parish in Ashford and photographed them, you will often find men named on more than one memorial, there may be more clues from another memorial. What I found though was that the main town memorial only listed part of the towns tragedy, there were many more casualties than that.

3, Go to your local library reference section and check their filling cabinets under WW1, Someone may have already done the work or there might be useful information, with Sittingbourne I found a list of all men on the memorial plus ranks, in Ashford I found an ornate list of men who had enlisted from the railway and where they went, also a listing of those killed where and when. Now a few of the men were identified, also some possibilties for others came up.

4, The local library is also useful for the next step,as you will find copies of your local paper on microfilm there- if your memorial has a construction date on -an few do you can look up the opening cerimony, the casualty list is sometimes revieled here, if you want to do this anyway, just turn to the remeberance service every 11th November from 1919 onwards until you read the report of it taking place at the memorial, you know then that it opened in the last year. you then have to work backwards to find the announcement. these were big occasions so won't be missed. Ashfords was opened in 1924 by Sir Ian Hamilton.

5, Check the local newspapers from late 1914 to mid 1915, they often published lists of menserving or enlisted and to what regiment. You can check these names to see if any tally as possibilites from you list of men on the memorial.

6, You should now havew your list of memorial men with quite a few possibilites, new is to go to a book called Soldiers died in the Great War. It is a list of men who died with a particular regiment, the books come out one per regiment. you can order these through your local library on laser loan, ie if you wanted to look up certain men from one regiment then order the soldiers died for that one regiment.The information given is date of death, place of birth, enlistment and residence and theatre of death Another peice of advice is to order the volumes for your local regiment, ie for me the East Kent Regt, or the W.Kents.As men killed are more likely to be in there. You can go through your whole memorial list in a night. Also worth getting hold of is the soldiers died for the Royal Artillery as meany men were killed with them, also if you can get hold of rcross of Sacrifice Vol 1 which lists officers killed (to check possibilites) and Cross of Sacrifice vol 4 which lists all the men of the Navy, Marines and RAF.. Kent being a strong Navy recruitment area i found many here. this can all be very dificult if your library doesn't want to help but certain places hve all of the volumes, the PRO and the Guildhall library in London have complete sets, Hull library, Manchester and Bromley libraries also, there are probably more I don't know about, so there is a good alternative.

7, Your list will now have many names found now but still you have many gaps,now the real donkey work begins. Sit down at your local library and go through the King and country columns and death and in memorium columns in your local papers from Aug 1914 to mid 1919. This is truely hard but great and you find most of your men here and often the sad tale that surrounds the death. Importantly many men from your memorial may have died in the service of the Australian or Canadian armies, I found many on my two memorials and as we have no access to Australian or Canadian casualty lists this is vital. As a rough rule it takes roughly a month before a death appears in the paper, also you find men listed who died after discharge from wounds etc, these men are not listed in soldiers died so this is quite good. You read some excellent material in these papers, at the end of this process your list should be mostly full and you should be left with only afew names.

8, There are several things to try to find these last few men, firstly locate your absentee voters list for Jan 1918. In kent they are in the county records office, although Folkestone library has Folkestones one. In Jan 1918 an electoral roll was made up so that all men 20 and over registered for a vote,  as many ere in the army they registered as an absentee voter (ie postal vote). This list was construced in Jan 1918, many of these men were killed later on in 1918 so it may be worth a look. Failling that and you live in the South you can go to St. Catherines house and consult the death registers for the Army and navy and at least see the possibilties for the names you are looking for, you can then check these in soldiers died. I even tried the local British legion to see if they had any knowledge of the men they were remembering each 11th November, with the intention of presenting them with my research. They were not helpful, I even had a man dispatched round the find out "what the bloody hell i was up to", so if I was you I wouldn't bother with them which I find sad. it was enough to put me off joining them, one thing like that torpedoed all their recruitement efforts for me.

Go on research your memorial, anyone can make these men less anonimous, when you are finished lodge a copy with the imperial war museum who are keeping records of all memorials.

My conclusions about my memorials

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Hotlink to the Northallerton memorials project