Roll of Honour

[bigduke6]

Its surprising what some folk will throw out, leave behind or forget. I searched an old thread yesterday as I thought I'd mentioned it before but only in passing and never realised how long ago it was.

So it was 5 years + I saved this Roll of Honour from a pine reclamation /repairers yard, obvious they had emptied the place in question ( A Methodist Church in Wigan), which is fair enough but think its a bit of a disgrace from the church's point to let this go, may be it was a mistake but you do wonder, as the Church closed in 2008, it was approx 2010 when I stumbled across it, so they had plenty of time to empty it, may be just interested in the Silver? I,m not a religious person in fact I'm a none believer, but don't hold a grudge to anyone who is, every one to there own I say, but I wonder how many other PoW's with such items suffered the same fate ?

The reclamation yard was the typical type, as I'd expressed interest in the Roll of Honour only but I had to buy the whole thing, to be honest I would paid a lot more than I did but was happy to save it.

So with a few leads and recent research regarding my Grandad and his battalion in WW1, I decided to dust off the Roll of Honour and try and find out about some of the named Servicemen.
They are all survivor's of WW1 there are 21 Names on the Roll, but only 11 have Service numbers, so these are the first ones to find, having a cancelled account with Ancestry UK, you can still search WW1 Medal Cards for free, so had a perfect opportunity last few evenings, Quite interesting what you can find, as one of the 10 with no service Numbers come up as the only one in the Liverpool Scottish with that name 2nd Lt..... and an address (he had applied for his medals in 1924)

Researching something like this can go off in tangents, but all good and interesting, two brothers or family members were in the RE, but on the roll it had L.F.R.E, bit head scratching as the F on the roll was in old handwriting so I was plucking at straws, but there was a Lancashire (fortress) Royal Engineers, the medal cards for the two show RE but one of them it also shows RE (T) tunnellers I guess? any thoughts DRP ?

The other relative was later commissioned 2nd Lt..........

One thing about the Roll is I would of expected a lot more Local Regiments, as these men were local to the Church or most would of been.

Only Three local Regiments, 11th South Lancashire Regiment (St Helens Pals)
Lancashire Fusiliers and Kings (Liverpool Scottish) Regiment.

Still researching but an interesting project (clean and warm also).

Information

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[muffett.2008]

Great save.
Yep, going off on a tangent is easy when researching, my Archivist daughter is always leading me back on track.
But the wonderous things you can discover by getting sidetracked is what makes it all worth it.

[bigduke6]

Thanks Muffer,

I was just lucky and was there at the right time to save it..... As for research you can get lost in time in some cases specially with things like Medal collecting......

There are a few mistakes on the roll, so makes it harder, couple of Names and a digit out in the Service number, one of the Names I am struggling with, as his service number doesn't relate with the Regiment and no trace of him in that Regiment, so could be a mistake on the name, number or Regiment, its a shame as he is the only one on the Roll which states his Battalion, 11th South Lancashire Regiment, which was a "Pals" Battalion raised by Lord Derby, famous for the Liverpool Pals, 17th,18th,19th,20th Battalions, (for anyone interested there is an excellent book, Liverpool Pals by Graham Maddocks)

[Peter Laidler]

I was in the old Railway workshops at Swindon a few weeks ago, which has been revamped into a huge shopping mall. The developers have kept every Roll of Honour board that was in the huge facility. They're all cleaned, revarnished and names re-gilded and placed in the mall walls where they once hung. All full of old Swindon 'moonraker' anglo-saxon names from the past. Good for them.