A charity is looking for the original home of a battered war memorial found abandoned in a scrapyard in Greater Manchester.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/manchester/8324663.stm

Thanks for posting this. Do you know if the names on the Memorial are or could be readily available? I am sure that given the collective brainpower on the Forum the mystery of where it came from could be solved.

Best regards,

Ian.

Ian
Try here http://picasaweb.google.com/h4w35side/Scra...873297778025186 I've looked at a couple of names, one man from Salford, one from Blackburn.

Regards Doug.

Could be a demolished warehouse in the Salford Quays area.

Could well be a generic memorial associated with a factory or perhaps a church or working mens club - no insignia associated with a town or district.

There is certainly an Irish Catholic association with at least some of the men - I found 2 listed on the CWGC for Moston St Josephs RC Cem. But I have to go out!
Various place names - Cheetham, Upper and lower Broughton, Whitefield, Harpurhey, Chorlton on Medlock

It needs some more work on SDGW an the CWGC - I am sure clues would emerge. John Hartley will be able to help, no doubt.

One of the men is one of John Hatley's.

Edward Withers http://www.stockport1914-1918.co.uk/w.php

No work place shown, John may have more info.

Garry

We await John's arrival to enlighten us - I wonder if any of the others are known to John - it would seem quite likely.

Obviously the memorial is mixed in religious terms - so an area or factory would seem favourite.

Ian,

Am I seeing things??

From the site;


Garry

Sorry Garry, you are of course quite correct. I couldn't see JH's subtle pastel shading at the angle the screen was at.

Interestingly , Pte Withers appears to be a Methodist amongst a goodly number of Catholics - so the memorial is certainly not to only one religion.

Regards Ian

Ian,

No problems, you had me doubting myself for a while.

Another of John's: Harry Newhall from Altrincham.

Regards,

Garry

And I presume Harry is C of E.

Convinced that JH will be able to solve this one.

I would commend his thread to Pals hoping that we can collectively shed some light on the question of where this memorial came from.

It's just the sort of conundrum that this Forum is so good at tackling.

My Guess being that I am local to where it was found it that the memorial was from a factory in Trafford Park. Large companies like Brooke Bond, Kelloggs, Turner brothers, Avro, Westinghouse Electric Company etc have been there since WWI. So I would say there is a place to start.

A Trafford Park factory sounds like a good suggestion - any ideas how we can nail down which one? Memorial books? Any clues from the battalions represented?

An idea would be to see if we could find any details of where any of thes emen worked prior to WWI. If a few worked at one place, that would seem the place it's from. Trafford Park was the biggest Industrial Estate in Europe at one time, and I can remember in the 70's and 80's lots of it being knocked down. A massive factory was Turner Brothers - an Asbestos factory and my Gran worked there circa WWII, so I assume it was around between the wars.

Yes, I am sure we can get some trades from the 1911 Census - anyone with unlimited access that can look for some of them?

Has anyone got a list of names? The link to the names keep crashing on me

Guys,

Have just tried to transcribe the memorial and I will attempt to put it on-line on the www.roll-of-honour.com web site to see if anybody in the wider world knows anything. Should be on-line in the Lancashire Section later today.

Would love to help, but cannot read any of the names !! Ralph.

Martin

Let us know when its on your site.

Steve

Good luck with the transcription. I can read a good number of the surnames but the initials can be problematical - some of the detail is a bit wayward as usual e.g the Royal Engineer is a Royal Fusilier.

One thing that is becoming obvious as I research the names is that many of them enlisted in Clitheroe. I am now getting the feeling we are dealing with a company that had several depots, one of which was in Clitheroe. I'll put the detail on-line later and ese what everyine else thinks.

Hmmm. Could be one of 10s of Mills !

Yes, Clitheroe is 20 miles north of Manchester so a company depot might be the explanation. Good work.

THe details are now on-line at:

http://www.roll-of-honour.com/Lancashire/U...Manchester.html

Having analysed the birth, enlisted and resident locations, appart from Manchester that will obviously occur, the main places involved with these men are Clitheroe, Pendleton and Salford. Does that help with tracking down the company branches/depots?

The demographic is interesting - no officers identified that I can see out of approx 50 names seems atypical of most memorials I've seen.

I may have found it....... What do you think? It fits in and the memorial is listed as "Lost"

CASTLE LODGE INDEPENDANT ORDER OF ODDFELLOWS (LOST)

INDEPENDANT ORDER OF ODDFELLOWS, MANCHESTER UNITY/ LOYAL CASTLE LODGE CLITHEROE NO 70/ THE GREAT WAR 1914 - 1918/ (NAMES)/ IN MEMORIAM TO THOSE WHO DIED THAT WE MIGHT LIVE/ (NAMES)/ "LET THEIR NAMES BE REVERED"

Physical Description
ROLL OF HONOUR

CREST OF THE ORDER DEPICTED ON THE MEMORIAL

MEMORY OF THE BRETHEREN WHO FELL IN THE GREAT WAR 1914 - 18/ "THEY DIED THAT WE MIGHT LIVE"/ (NAMES)/ THE FOLLOWING ALSO SERVED/ (NAMES)

If you type Edmund Rawlinson (who is on the list) into google - this comes up via the old Channel 4 website for the great war.

I somehow doubt this is it... the inscription on this memorial is simply ROLL OF HONOUR 1914-1918 where as the one you describe goes into greater detail.

Just adding CWGC details.

I realise and appreciate what you are saying, I assume that there was a role of honour, but there could be a memorial too. I would guess it's about the size that an Oddfellows memorial could be. The link beyween Edmund P. Rawlinson being on the Oddfellows thing, is tantalising close !

I think what may have happened here is that E Rawlinson may have ended up on 2 missing memorials - one being his Clitheroe Odd-Fellows lodge memorial and one being at his place of work. I suppose it is likely that he may be on a local Clitheroe memorial as well.

I would have thought it unlikely - although not impossible - that the Clitheroe OF lodge would have lost this number of men? Also the Odd fellows crest is not featured as has been already pointed out.

As regards the lack of officers on the memorial, it is certainly not unknown for officers to be listed separately. Obviously if this is a company memorial, any officers would have been more senior employees or junior directors.

I presume that these works memorials may well have been ordered out of a catalogue with a list of names provided for inclusion on them . I wonder if there were also subscription funds among the surviving workmates.

One of the men listed was Peter Hulland who worked at Low Moor Farm, nr clitheroe. So this may help or it may scupper the "Works Memorial" idea.

Attached is a Picture of Peter

Roughly how many of these lads enlisted in Clitheroe - it certainly seems a key place - and perhaps as much as a "centre of gravity" for the Memorial as Central Manchester.
I also noticed that Pendleton is in evidence as a regularly mentioned place name. I think it is close to Clitheroe - could Peter Hulland's farm have been raising sheep? Mills would seem a possibility.

Not at all. As a Salford Lad, Pendleton is basically the heart of Salford. Now its a Shopping Arcade and flats - but I guess circa 1914 it would have been industry and slums.

Can I use this with the memorial on the website please?

There also seems to be a Pendleton on the A59 near Clitheroe. Interesting.

What other organisations may have had a memorial ? I notice from a brief check on Ancestry that several are of Irish ancestry, could they have attended the same school or church at sometime ?

There are several different regiments and places of enrolment so it may suggest a connecting factor earlier in their short lives ?

Peter left Forton to work at Low Moor Farm, Clitheroe, before becoming a time keeper for the CWS at Chaigley Farm a few miles from Clitheroe.

CWS = Co-Oprative Wholesale Society of the CO-OP....... Hmmmmm????

Ben Wainwright also seems to be listed on an Addenda to the memorial in his town of birth:

Could we be talking about a large dairy operation? Cows rather than sheep?

Over 40 years since I've been there but it used to be semi rural. A few Mills and Clitheroe Golf Course

Yes, its a dairy farm and seems to be run at the time by the Co-Op

Low Moor far, is only a mile or so away from Pendleton, Clitheroe. So I think we are hitting the ball park.

It would seem that the Co-op was and is a major force in dairy operations. Of course the Co-op has also been based in Manchester for many a long year.

Did they have a dairy operation in Manchester that became defunct 15 or so years ago?

We could be looking at the town lads - obviously many of Irish extraction in the working class reas of Manchester - who worked in the dairy and the country cousins who worked on the farms whose cows served the dairy. Just thinking out loud.

Another missing memorial with links to Manchester's industrial past:

Tootals

I worked in the Newton Heath factory as a kid!

Just completed the CWGC section of the web site so I will put that up. I was thinking along the lines of a Farming Co-Operative myself. Anyone with access to the 1911 census could do a quick check against some of the men in their 30's to see what their occupations were. Page should be on-line in the next five minutes.

Chaigley Farm was a CWS farm according to this website

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/m.baird2/cws/cwsdairies.html

In Manchester at Irlam - the CWS had up until 15 years ago a Margarine and butter works......




Maybe we should try and locate !

Not in their 30s but the Alston brothers were both working in the cotton industry (the same as their mother and father) one a weaver and the other a labourer. They were both CoE so if a church memorial this may be a clue.

Are there enough names for this to be a generic regional Cooperative Society memorial?

I think the church connection may be a blind alley given that there appears to be both catholics and protestants represented on the memorial.

Ian
I agree with the church angle as I realised after my post that there were both RC and CoE men listed. Another thought; this may be a case of a factory memorial where the children of workers were included.

Myrtle

I would tend to agree with Ian now, discounting the church memorial. There aren't that many names on it for a regional memorial for a labour intensive industry but the CWS farming operation was only started in 1896. Dairy farming possibly isn't as labour intensive as arable farming and as the places of enlistment are quite widely spread perhaps it is CWS dairy farms in "Lancashire" or similar. There are archives for CWS, minute books etc, but I don't think they're available online.