Where oh Where did the War Memorials Go - from St George's and St John's churches, Barnsley?

Yesterday was my usual weekly visit to Barnsley Archives with my friend GB.  I have been going twice a week, but things caught up with me on Tuesday and I had to spend the day in bed after a busy weekend, so no pub inventories this week.  I'm still a bit groggy and didn't wake up until 11am today (the cat went out at 7am) but overall I feel "not too bad", so that's better than unconscious!

We now have a regular booking on the digitised Barnsley Chronicle, an hour each from 10am (opening time).  GB and I are fairly flexible within this - one idea for this week was that she took the first slot as sometimes the Cudworth Non-Conformist baptism register she is transcribing takes a little while to come up from the storeroom in the Town Hall basement whereas I'm currently working from the fiche of Worsborough Common United Free Church baptisms so I could get started on that straight away.  As it turned out I got to the Archives first so I grabbed the seat! Sorry G!

Barnsley Chronicle 15 February 1919 (Barnsley Archives)

I've been looking into the process of setting up memorials to the First World War in Barnsley and District.  I had previously searched through the first six months of 1920 but I had realised as I read the Chronicle that discussions about memorials had started much earlier so this week I jumped back to the beginning of 1919. 

I found the above advertisement in the 15 February issue, it reads:

"St John's Parish

War Memorial

Will the Relatives or Friends of Men Fallen in the War who were resident in the Parish or members of the Congregation please forward their Names and Regiments to the Rev G O Tibbits, 38 Cope Street, Barnsley as it is intended to

Erect an Inscribed Tablet in the Church to their Memory."

St John's Church was in the centre of the Bare Bones or Wilson's Piece area of Barnsley, on the southern edge of the town centre and where some of the housing dated back to the end of the 18th century. In the early 20th century the area was densely packed and overcrowded.  St John's records in Barnsley Archives go back to 1845 for baptisms and to 1858 for marriages.  Prior to that the Church of England residents would have gone to St George's, which opened a little earlier or St Mary's in the town centre.  There were no burials from the church, probably due to the proximity of Barnsley Cemetery. 

Even in Yococo - Barnsley Council and the Barnsley Archives' own online image collection there are not very many pictures of St John's church.

St John's Church, Barnsley about 1960 (from Yococo)

The building work in front of the church is one of the small blocks of flats on Union Street/Duke Crescent.  The church was closed in 1968 and demolished soon afterwards.  An old peoples home stands on the site now. 

So where did the "Inscribed Tablet" go?  To which local church did the congregation move?  Maybe St Peter's on Doncaster Road?  Have they got the tablet?

The plans at St George's church, another parish on the edge of the town centre in Barnsley, were obviously even more advanced than those of St John's.  In the 12 April 1919 edition of the Chronicle I found a large newspaper report about the "Impressive Dedication Service at St George's Church"; the Bishop of Wakefield attended and dedicated a chapel and two memorial windows, one to the memory of the men in the parish who fell in the war.

The list of names read out at the dedication at St George's Church
(from the Barnsley Chronicle 12 Apr 1919 - Barnsley Archives)

The article states that "chapel of oak panelling and the stained glass windows are distinct ornaments to the sacred edifice and will prove lasting memorials of those in whose honour they have been placed". 

These are the names read out by the vicar C E Dixon in the course of the service:

Bernard Harry Alderson	Bertram Allsop	Ernest Henry Allsop
Wm Bates	Jack Russel Benson	Frank Bridge
Herbert Birkenshaw	Fred Brettoner	John Burns
John Francis Burbury	Henry Carter	Thomas Edgar Carrick
Clarence Capindale	Walter Cross	Harry Collier
John Wm Cooper	Carl Penrose Dixon	Alfred Edon
Arthur Edon	James William Edon	Herbert Harry England
George Ekin	Harold Feasby	Frank Ferreday
Harry Firth	Frederick Flude	Wm Henry Falloon
Walter France	Cyril Robert Fleetwood	Ivan Grindell
Noah Green	Rupert Gilbert	Fred Harrison
Harold Hodgson	Charles Edward Hall	Percy Hague
Herbert Hobson	George Hudson	Tom Jaques
Arthur Jepson	Wm Henry Kidd	Cecil Robert Lawson
Edgar Starmer Metcalf	Wm Merrill	Thomas Merrill
Ernest Merrill	Ernest Pilley	Geo Wm Pickering
Ernest Poole	Josiah Peace	James Pendlebury
Robert Prosser	Arthur Redhall	Frances Edgar Ridley
Alfred Rist	Robert Mark Richardson	Harry Sergeant
Harry Scargill	James Christopher Speight	Frank Steeples
Ben Sutcliffe	Harry Sugden	Charles Stewart
Geo Sykes	Geo Smith	James Stuart Swift
Alonzo Wilson Swallow	Norman Theaker	Arthur Utley
John Thomas Vowles	Harry Wilson	Fred Walker
Charles Whittam	Thomas Waddington

 

I find it particularly moving that several of the surnames crop up more than once; there are two Allsops, three Edons, and three Merrills in the list.  Also some names familiar to me appear - Tom Jaques, Fred Brettoner and Alonzo Wilson Swallow - all three men connected to the OH's family tree.  I have written Alonzo's story in a previous blog post.

St George's Church, Barnsley in about 1910 (from Yococo)

St George's church was older than St John's, but not by much.  The first records in Barnsley Archives are baptisms in 1832 and marriages in 1837.  It was demolished in 1993 after being closed for some years.  I understand that the building was unsafe.  The congregation moved to a modern building not far away and the churchyard is still there surrounded by the railings you can see in the picture above (from the Yococo website again) with a surprisingly small empty space in the middle where the church once stood.

Are there any records in the new St George's about the men who whose names were read out in 1919?  Was a plaque erected in the church with their names and did it get moved to the new church?

I will continue my search in future weeks and in the meantime if anyone knows the whereabouts of the memorials from these two churches could you please get in touch?

Thanks.