Tickhill The Parish Church of St Mary.

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1 Tickhill The Parish Church of St Mary.

2 The War Memorial Tickhill

3 Tickhill s War Memorial stands just inside the north gates of St Mary s churchyard and many people pass by it daily, probably giving little thought to the men that it commemorates, their connection with Tickhill or where they died. The memorial lists the names of 58 Tickhill men, who served in either the first world or the second world war, however one of the men named on the memorial died whilst serving in the Korean war. The memorial stone itself. It is made from unpolished Aberdeen granite and takes the form of a cross. It stands some thirteen feet high and weighs approximately seven tons. It is not known where the memorial was made, but it is known that it was sculpted by a Mr. Matthews in 1919, at a cost of s, (an equivalent of approximately 10,000 at today s prices). It was paid for by public subscription. The memorial was unveiled on Sunday the sixth of June 1920 which coincidentally was exactly 24 years before D-Day in World War 2 and 31 years before the death of Harold Edgley the last man named on the memorial. The unveiling was performed by Major General the Earl of Scarborough during a service of dedication. Newspaper reports of the occasion and photographs of the event show that the majority of Tickhill residents attended this service. The children of the village marched to the church from their school. The girls all wore white dresses and the boys had on their Sunday jackets, they all carried white flowers which were placed around the foot of the memorial cross at the end of the service.

4 There are no definitive rules about which names are included on memorials, different communities used different criteria, some include those who fought and died, others include those who fought and survived, others include civilian as well as service casualties. The criteria for inclusion on the memorial appear to have been that a man was either born in Tickhill or had resided in Tickhill prior to enlisting for service. Every man connected to the town that died had a right to be remembered on the town s Memorial. The names for inclusion on the memorial were collected from the families and friends of the fallen by the vicar at that time, the Reverend Horatio Edwin Booty, but some families appear to have moved away from the area during the latter years of the war or immediately after the end of the conflict. As a result of this, a number of men with strong Tickhill connections, who lost their lives during the hostilities, are not listed on the memorial. There are, in my opinion, upwards of 16 men who should be included but are not. Since moving to Tickhill, I have researched the names inscribed on the memorial, attempting to discover not only military details but also family details, in order to discover the men behind the names.

5 The details that I have managed to gather for most of the men consist of their full name, their military rank and number, the regiment, unit, ship or squadron with which they served, their age at death, the place of burial and their connection with Tickhill. I am very keen to obtain more personal details of each of the men listed, such as, there occupation prior to the war, where they lived in Tickhill, any family stories and of course a photograph of each of them! I am very pleased to have to have found basic details on all those listed on the memorial. Of the 58 men listed, 40 died as a result of the First World War, 17 as a result of the Second World War, and as mentioned earlier, 1 died during the Korean War. As a result of my research I have found evidence that over 200 Tickhill men fought in World War one and two women, a Miss Nicholson, who I believe drove an ambulance in France and a Miss Leather who ran a YMCA. 22 of those listed have no known grave, that is a surprisingly high 38% of those named on the memorial, the reason for this is that in the early years of the Great War, soldiers battlefield ID was written onto fabric tape, in the dreadful conditions endured in the trenches, the writing frequently faded and the fabric tape rotted, thus leaving the soldiers with no ID, a situation which unfortunately led to many soldiers being buried as unknown. The familiar metal dog-tag was not introduced for the majority of soldiers until late A further difficulty in the early years of the First World War was that of recording the burial sites of the fallen. The forerunner of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, the Imperial Graves Commission only came into being in Prior to this it was the responsibility of the regimental chaplain to record, as best he could, the graves of the fallen in his regiment. This was, as can be imagined, a difficult task and mistakes were often made. If the chaplain himself was killed, or died as a result of injury or illness, the task of marking and mapping the graves of the dead was very often not taken up by others within the regiment. It is therefore no surprise that a significant proportion of those recorded on our war memorial have no known grave.

6 I am very pleased to have to have found basic details on ALL those listed on the memorial but despite many hours of research, full details of many are unfortunately still missing. I would be very grateful for any additional information or photographs which anyone might be able to give me regarding any of the individuals mentioned in these research papers, both those recorded on the memorial and those who perhaps should have been included but weren t. You can contact me via the link on the Historical Society s website. John Cowie November 2012

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