It seems entirely appropriate, given that it is Remembrance Day and the project has recently discovered a photograph of the Kildwick School war memorial, to report that we have updated the biographies of the following men that were former pupils of the school:
William Barker
Walter Dawson
Joseph Green
James Pollard
Joseph Smith
Harry Walmsley
In amongst a bundle of items loaned to the local History Group for scanning and inclusion in our archive was this:
Isn’t it beautiful ?
This is the only known photograph of the Kildwick School WW1 memorial, showing the names of former pupils of the school who died in the Great War. The memorial is lost and, despite extensive searching by members of the “Farnhill WW1 Volunteers Project” and the current staff of the school, is unlikely to be found.
An article on this memorial and updates to the biographies of the volunteers who are named on it, will be published during the next few months.
It’s been a while, but Farnhill and Kildwick Local History Group have updated their article on the catastrophic fires that affected two mills in Farnhill in December 1905 and March 1906.
These two incidents, occurring in rapid succession, severely impacted employment opportunities in the village and would result in many of the Farnhill WW1 Volunteers moving out of the village after WW1.
It’s four-and-a-half years since our project concluded, but we’re still on the look-out for material about the Farnhill WW1 Volunteers.
Recently the History Group was loaned a bundle of photographs of the village by a member of the Walmsley family, to scan for our archive. Among these was a photograph of Harry Walmsley, one of the Volunteers who died during the war.
The photograph shows Harry (fourth from right, middle row) with a group of men who might be his training unit – 11th (Reserves) battalion of the Duke of Wellington’s (West Riding) Regiment – or members of 1/5 battalion with whom he served in France. Either way, it’s a great addition to our collection.
When the Heritage Lottery-funded part of the Farnhill WW1 Volunteers project finished, at the end of 2018, it was always the intention to continue gathering material on the 68 men from Farnhill who volunteered to serve in WW1.
The publication of the 1921 census, which has recent been made available free-of-charge in North Yorkshire libraries, has enabled us to add further biographical information on how these men lived and worked in the post-war period.
During our project we were able to obtain photographs of a number of local Rolls of Honour; some of which were quite difficult to locate.
One that we were unable to find, but which has recently come to light, is the memorial roll of Woodrow’s Mill at Junction. It includes the names of a number of men who formed part of our project.
We will be using this information to update the biographies of the Farnhill WW1 Volunteers over the summer.
We are very grateful to staff at Burberry’s Crosshills for making this available to us.
The Kildwick War Memorial was dedicated 100 years ago today (3rd May 1921). The unveiling was carried out by Lady Horsfall, whose son was named on the memorial, and two former pupils of Kildwick school, Emma Booth and Cecelia Smith, who both lost their fathers in the conflict.
The memorial was decked in floral tributes from various local organisations, employers, families and friends.
To commemorate the centenary we have updated our article on the memorial.
A slideshow about the memorial is also available from the Farnhill and Kildwick Local History Group.
The Farnhill WW1 Volunteers project restricted itself to those men – service men and volunteers – who were named on the list compiled for Farnhill Parish Council early in 1916. However, it was always likely that we would find that some names had been missed off that list and the project had not been going long before people started to mention the name Thomas Fielding Whitaker.
Now that the project has completed the bulk of its work, it has been possible to research TF Whitaker and, in doing so, we have found that there were three men from the family, all of whom were involved in the war, one way or another.
This article updated in December 2020, with information about a sad centenary.
The project has recently been given copies of the Kildwick School admission records for 1918 to 1931 (the only years for which records have been found). These show the start and finish date of pupiis, along with details of why they left the school.
They have enabled biographies of the following WW1 Volunteers to be updated with information about their childrens’ school careers:
The full set of biographies can be found on the Biographies page.
If you have information that will enable us to further enhance our biographies of any of the 68 Farnhill WW1 Volunteers, please contact us.
