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.

Click here.

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.

Go take a look.

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.

Kildwick War Memorial

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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.

Article – A family at War

 

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.

According to the census return, in 1871 William Vickers (b.1825 in Brimington) was the Butler at Kildwick Hall, and his wife Sarah was the Housekeeper. Although the family had moved on by the time of the next census, perhaps to Eshton Hall (?), members of the Vickers family must have stayed in touch with the Brigg family at Kildwick Hall for several generations.

On 28th December 1914 John Jeremy Brigg, the son of Sir John Brigg, sent this message to Charles Vickers the grandson of William Vickers.

 

It reads:

Congratulations on your escape with thanks for the interesting card & good wishes
Yrs sincerely J.J.Brigg

The word “escape” was intriguing and an exchange of emails with Doug Aylward, the grandson of the recipient, revealed a connection with a Yorkshire WW1 tragedy.

In 1914 the Vickers family were living in Hartlepool when, on December 16th, the town – along with Scarborough and Whitby – was bombarded by a squadron of ships from the German Navy. The bombardment caused significant damage to the town and resulted in 130 civilian deaths with hundreds more injured. (See When Germany bombarded Hartlepool for more details.)

It seems that Charles Vickers did indeed have a lucky “escape”.

Posted 05/04/2020.
With thanks to Doug Aylward

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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.

Article – A family at War