The work required to conserve the Farnhill Methodist Chapel’s WW1 Roll of Honour is proceeding nicely and we hope to be able to unveil a digitally-restored replica as part of the “From Farnhill to the Front” exhibition.
In the meantime, here’s a small glimpse of the conservitor at work.
Come along to the Institute on Saturday 10th November, 10am to 4pm, to see the completed digital restoration and the rest of our From Farnhill to the Front exhibition.
A number of service medals and bravery awards were available to men who fought in WW1.
Analysis of the Farnhill WW1 Volunteers’ service records has enabled to say which men received which medals and awards for their WW1 service.
Article – Volunteers and their medals
Our exhibition, “From Farnhill to the Front”, will take place in the Institute, Main Street, Farnhill, on Saturday 10th November, between 10am and 4pm.
We are planning over 500 sq. ft. of display boards, and members of the project are engaged in a series of “sticky evenings” getting them all ready.
Here are some photos of the team, hard at work.
Time really does fly and it’s difficult to imagine that we are nearly at the end of our two-year Heritage Lottery funded Farnhill World War 1 Volunteers Project. In that time, with help and support from a large number of people, we have successfully researched the lives of the 68 men of Farnhill who volunteered to serve in WW1, and have also looked into what life in the village was like during the war.
We plan to share the results of our efforts in an exhibition, called “From Farnhill to the Front”, which will take place in the Institute, Main Street, Farnhill, on Saturday 10th November, between 10am and 4pm.
The exhibition will include:
Note: The main exhibition will be in the main hall on the ground floor. However the Poppy Waterfall and some exhibits will be on the first floor – only accessible by stairs.
We hope you’ll be able to come along.
I arrived in Farnhill with my parents, Rev. and Mrs. R. Hodgkinson, in August 1937. Christine was born in the Manse [39 Main Street, Farnhill], in August 1938. These are the memories of young children.
Rupert Edward Barker
Christine and I always think of Mr and Mrs Barker as Auntie and Uncle Barker. They lived opposite to us up the hillside, above the triangle of land which during the war held a few struggling allotments. They took a kindly interest in the very young family in the Manse and we often saw them as we passed Arbour Cottage on walks to the moor.
They were stalwart members of Father’s congregation at the chapel, involved in everything that went on. We do not know whether Uncle Barker ever held any chapel office, e.g. chapel steward, and I have only the faintest glimmer of a memory that he may have sometimes played the organ. Auntie Barker was always part of any catering done by “the Ladies”.
Both were kindly and generous in their willingness to help anyone who needed it, including nursing in their own bedroom a lady who had no one to help her after losing a leg to cancer. I believe she was with them several months, nursed until she died.
They were immensely kind to Christine and me. After a war-time winter, they turned up at the Manse with a splendid model dolls’ house made from magazine instructions out of matchboxes, with carpets, curtains and furniture. They made it on the winter evenings. Obviously they had a lot of fun making it together and we loved it. It survived many years of use, passing down to our younger sister.
In October 1943, Christine and I stayed with Auntie and Uncle Barker for two weeks. After a month away in the isolation hospital suffering from scarlet fever, we were still unable to go home as our new baby sister was only six weeks old.
We were upset to find we were not going home, but we only have happy memories of our time in Arbour Cottage – playing in the garden, Uncle Barker producing their old Halma board for a game in the evening, not to mention the excitement of seeing him change the fragile gas mantle and turn on the gas light.
We came out of hospital shaken and still poorly, but after two weeks of Auntie and Uncle’s loving care we walked home down the snicket happy and well.
In the summer of the following year we left Farnhill when Father moved to a new appointment, in August 1944, in Royton near Oldham – more than fifty mill chimneys pouring out black smoke at the end of our street.
Sometime during the next year, probably before the end of the war, Mother and Father were deeply upset by very bad news from Farnhill. We were told that Uncle Barker had had a terrible accident. He was found left for dead with severe head injuries and had not been expected to recover.
I remember that this was when Mother told me that Uncle Barker had been out on his bicycle, on his rounds as a policeman. I do not know where the accident happened, but no mention was made of it being in Farnhill.
Beyond all expectation, Uncle Barker recovered, after months of care. Mother said that far from his usual cheerful and kindly self Auntie had months of struggle with a difficult and fractious patient – the effects of the head injuries.
In the following years our parents made several moves around Lancashire and Cheshire and kept in touch with Farnhill. Christine and I eventually married and moved South. We never went back to Farnhill.
My last record of contact with Auntie and Uncle Barker is in the list Mother kept before my wedding in April 1963 of the names and addresses of people who sent wedding gifts, so that I could write to them.
Auntie and Uncle Barker were still living at Arbour Cottage, Main Street, Farnhill, and though unable to come to the wedding, sent a pair of linen pillowcases trimmed with pink and white crochet “for Anne’s bottom drawer” and a very nice fibre-glass tray. The pillowcases have long gone, but the tray is still in regular use – I think they would be pleased.
It has been a great pleasure to Christine and me to remember them. They were what my granny would have called “the soul of kindness”.
In the latter years of the nineteenth and early years of the twentieth centuries male employment in Farnhill was predominently in the local mills. Many of the young boys growing up in the village at this time, including those who would later become Farnhill WW1 Volunteers, might have expected to work in one of these mills.
At the start of 1905 Farnhill had at least four mills:
By the middle of 1906, however, only Aireside Mill was still capable of full operation.
An article about the sad fate of the Farnhill mills has been written by the Farnhill & Kildwick History Group.
A slideshow of pictures of the Farnhill mills is also available.
Almost a year ago we published an article about the Belgian refugees who came to this area during WW1.
Since then the project has been given some wonderful photographs of Belgian refugees who were based in Crosshills. We’ve updated the article to include them – click below to read it.
Article – WW1 Belgian refugees in Airedale
We don’t know exactly how the Farnhill Parish Council WW1 Roll of Honour was compiled – did someone go round house-to-house asking if any member of the household was already serving, or were people invited to send in the names of men they thought should be included ?
In any case, it must have been a difficult job for the Clerk to the Council to carry out. Particularly if you were just a young man in his teens, who had only taken on the Clerk’s job a few months previously.
So it was almost inevitable then that Tom Turner, the lad in question, missed the names of some of the men already serving in the forces off the list.
That’s understandable. What’s a little more difficult to fathom is how Tom managed to forget to include the name of his own father !
Read Article – Arthur Turner – who was missed off the list by his son.
Put this in your diary. Further details to follow nearer the day.
Work started this week on restoration of the Farnhill Methodist WW1 Roll of Honour.
The photo opposite shows project members Helen and Martin handing over the Roll to the conservitor Richard Hawkes (right) at his studio just outside Ripon.
Watch out for future updates on the progress of the restoration work – which has been made possible by funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund and by donations from members of the public.
