War and Remembrance

Huddersfield War Memorial at Greenhead Park, 1924

When the First World War ended in November 1918 it had claimed the lives of 21 million people across the world. Here in West Yorkshire, as elsewhere in the country, week after week the local newspapers carried the names of loved ones, friends, work colleagues and neighbours who would never be coming home. Such was the scale of casualties, it's hardly surprising that those who survived felt the need to provide permanent memorials so the names of those who had sacrificed their lives would not be forgotten.

The memorial window in Bradford Cathedral

West Yorkshire's war memorials take many different forms and they all tell a different story. A stained glass window in Bradford Cathedral features a soldier from the 6th Battalion, West Yorkshire Regiment. Mortally wounded he looks up at Christ dying on the cross. Another light in the same window shows a battlefield grave marked only by a soldier's helmet hung on the end of a rifle.

Bradford's Cenotaph was unveiled on July 1st, 1922

In Huddersfield Legh Tolson gave his house and land at Ravensknowle to the people of Dalton in memory of his two nephews who were killed in the War and the house is now home to the town's Tolson Museum. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission records that one of Legh's nephews, Second Lieutenant Robert Huntriss Tolson from Dalton in Huddersfield, fighting with the 15th Battalion, West Yorkshire Regiment - was 31 when he was killed on July 1st, 1916. He is buried in the Serre Road Cemetery in France.

Plaque at Lumb Falls [Photo: John Rumsby]

A very unusual plaque can be found at Lumb Falls near Heptonstall. Unveiled by the Elmet Trust in 2007, it's both a memorial to six men who were killed during the First World War - but whose visit to the Falls had been captured in a pre-war photograph - and to former poet laureate and Mytholmroyd lad Ted Hughes who was inspired by the photo to write a poem about the futility of war.

This park memorial is in Hebden Bridge

But perhaps the most familiar war memorials are those we find in the middle of parks and villages. Ninety years on from the end of the "war to end all wars" Featherstone has just unveiled a new war memorial. It wasn't that, until now, the town had forgotten to honour its war dead but, when the war memorial dating from 1924, was blown down in the 1970s, it was replaced by a concrete lamp post on a breeze block plinth. There were no names on the original memorial and anyone wanting to find the names of the dead had to consult the Roll of Honour in Featherstone Library. Made of brick, Featherstone's new memorial lists the names and regiments of those who gave their lives on stainless steel plaques. The memorial also commemorates those from the town who died in subsequent conflicts.

Memorial, Carlinghow WM Club [Photo: John Rumsby]

To commemorate the 90th anniversary of the Armistice which ended the First World War, the BBC Bradford and West Yorkshire website will be putting together a picture gallery of some of the war memorials across Bradford, Calderdale, Kirklees and Wakefield. If you would like to take part by sending us YOUR photos of public war memorials in any of our four districts please send us your images:

[The BBC Bradford and West Yorkshire website would like to thank Dr John Rumsby for all his help and for permission to use many of his photos of West Yorkshire war memorials]