Unusual War Memorials - Lychgates in Felkirk and Wortley

Today the OH took me out for another airing, a drive around the outskirts of Barnsley looking for war memorials.  I particularly wanted to visit Felkirk church as last time we went it was covered in scaffolding and plastic sheeting so I came away without a photograph.  Today was a bit grey, but the church looked wonderful.  You can see a lot of work has been done to the main building and to the adjacent old Sunday Schoolroom.  The notice board by the gate includes a plaque giving credit to National Lottery funding for the work.

St Peter's church, Felkirk, near Barnsley

The OH has a second cousin five times removed (yes, I know that's so distant as to be invisible by the Hubble telescope but it's still a relationship as far as I'm concerned) George Owram who was the schoolmaster in South Hiendley in the 1871 census.  Two of his children, Eleanor (b.1871) and Fanny (b.1873) were born in the area and baptised at St Peter's church, Felkirk.  

Felkirk and South Hiendley in 1894 - note the school at the bottom right (from Old Maps)

Today I also wanted to take photos of the lychgate - which I had spotted on Brierley Village website as being the war memorial for the area.  This is the second lychgate war memorial I've seen in the last few weeks, the other being at Wortley.  A lychgate was traditionally a covered gateway into a churchyard and sometimes contains a table or stone block for resting the coffin (or the shrouded body) on its way to the church.  At Wortley there is a traditional lychgate with a central stone block at the far end of the church yard - the memorial appears to have been a later addition in the same style.

Lychgate and War Memorial at Felkirk

At Felkirk the legend "1914 may they rest in peace 1918" is carved in raised letters onto the beam above the gate.  Inside the structure to the left is a bronze plaque bearing the names of the fallen from the First World War and to the right a similar plaque for the fallen of the Second World War.

1914 - 1918 plaque at Felkirk

The First World War names are:

A E Bettney	H Garton	A Ogley
A Bowen	L Godley	J A Parkinson
M B P Boyd	S Goodchild	F Peckett
N Bradbury	B Govier	C Pickard
G Burton	J Harwood	P Sendall
R Davis	W R Hayton	E Taylor
T O Dunhill	J Holmes	W Taylor
J Elliott	J A Hunt	F Teal
J Fenn	W Johnson	A Torr
W H Garner	E W Litherland	T Webb
G Gartenfeld	C Miles	H Wilkinson
H Gartenfeld	W Owen	G W Woodward



1939 - 1945 Plaque at Felkirk

The Second World war names are:

F Barraclough	H Hopkinson	M Rose
H Bird	R Jackson	J Smith
A Brook	W King	J E Smith
R E Butterwood	A Lillward	L Steele
D Collins	R Moore	J Taylor
C Cooper	G Needham	F I Tibble
W Davenport	J Nichols	R Thorpe
F Davis	A E Oldroyd	A Ward
W Flynn	T A Oliver	Margaret Wardle
C Fretwell	E Pashley	R A Whittlestone
H Goften	H Richards	R B Wilson
H Roberts		D Livett

We took pictures of the lychgate at St Leonard's church, Wortley last weekend.



The Memorial Lytchgate at St Leonard's church, Wortley

Above and around the gable of the gateway it reads, "To the Glory of God & In Memory / of the Wortley Men who Gave Their / Lives for their Country in the Great War 1914-1918".  Some of the lettering is a little bit broken - the OH, who is a joiner by trade - said that a lot of work had gone into that carving.  He pointed out the little holes around each letter where the craftsman had drilled into the wood to create the curves of the letters before chiselling out the straight lines.

Inside the gateway are two plaques, bronze mounted on wood.  Both are headed simply Fallen and I assume these are the names for the First World War.

The WW1 Fallen plaques at Wortley church

These names are:

Frank Bidwell	Enoch Laycock
William N Bradshaw	Frank Laycock
Frank Copley	Thomas Mansell
William Crapper	John Myerscough
Henry Ford	Sidney Raynor
Charles Harker	Samuel Reynolds
George Hough	John Robbins
Vincent Jowitt	Leonard White
George King	Harold Wragg
Cyril Laycock

There is a small plaque inside the gateway with three names for the Second World War.


Wortley WW2 names

The Wortley WW2 names are:

Kenneth Francis
Mabel Turner
William Turton

I will be adding Felkirk and amending Wortley to add the names on the War Memorials Online site shortly.