After all the Armistice commemorative events held in 2018 it may seem superfluous to return to the subject of the First World War.

But it is important to remember that the war’s impact upon society did not end with the Armistice in November 1918. Three years afterwards, many towns and villages were still in the process of publicly grieving their war dead, and erecting the local memorials which still serve to the present-day as a focus for community remembrance ceremonies every November.

According to the UK National Inventory of War Memorials, across the country there are 36,951 memorials to the First World War. Although it had always been common practice to bury the war dead in mass graves within the country where they fell, the  Great War was different in that the scale of casualties was so shocking, and that the soldiers were essentially civilians in uniform. For the first time, it was recognised by the authorities that the grieving families left behind needed formal recognition of their grief – not only were the dead, where possible, buried near the battlefields in individual graves, each named on their own dedicated headstone, but friends and relatives were to be given shrines within their own communities at home, so that they had a physical place to visit and mourn. The Royal Academy of Arts, as well as the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, held exhibitions and produced printed guidelines in 1919, to offer inspiration and guidance to war memorial committees – which sprang up everywhere immediately after the war – on appropriate memorial designs. This explains why the majority of memorials are fairly similar in appearance. War memorials had to serve a range of purposes and values – they expressed political, patriotic, emotional and religious responses to the war. They were communal and public, yet also designed as a focus for private grief and solace.

The most popular features of British war memorials were obelisks ; the ‘Sword of Honour’; Blomfield’s ‘Cross of Sacrifice’; and the cross. They often carried religious texts, but the dominant themes were usually those of sacrifice, honour and duty. Those who could afford it included sculptural features such as soldiers or allegorical figures. With very few exceptions they were inscribed with the names of those individuals who had died, emphasising the personal losses, recognition to be credited to each person, and the desire for perpetual remembrance. But these memorials were also about the community – the memorial symbolised the enduring bonds of community in the face of tragic loss. They were designed as a focus for civic pride – hence the prominent role played in the war memorial committees, and at the unveiling ceremonies, by local public servants, clergy, and leading families of the social elite, commerce and industry.

Relatively restrained and conservative in design, Embsay-with-Eastby memorial sits proudly alongside the village institute and overlooking Main Street. Made from millstone grit donated by the Duke of Devonshire, it was designed by Godfrey Larrigan Clarke, a 36-year old architect, the son of the vicar of Steeton, near Keighley. He married in 1926 in London, and by 1939 was living in Bradford, before moving back down to London, where he died in 1946. He was perhaps lucky to be commissioned for the Embsay memorial, as the 40-foot column on the Steeton-with-Eastburn memorial, which he had designed, had collapsed during a storm only a few weeks after its unveiling in 1920, and had to be strengthened and re-erected.

Embsay-with-Eastby’s war memorial was unveiled and dedicated on Sunday afternoon, 21^st August 1921. A short programme for the service was printed for the occasion. A copy of this little booklet can be viewed amongst the local history files in Embsay library. The programme for the dedication of Embsay-with-Eastby’s war memorial declared that it was: “To the honoured Memory of the Men from this parish who gave their lives for their King and Country in the Great War 1914-1919.”

Although there was no room on the actual memorial itself for the first names of the war dead to be inscribed, the full forenames with surnames were printed together in the booklet.

The form of the service was an interesting reflection of how attitudes towards the war had not yet hardened into the deep disillusionment which emerged a decade later, and which has now become so deeply embedded into our own commonly-held present-day perspective on the war as the meaningless mass slaughter of a generation of young men. In 1921, despite the immense and raw grief still felt, most people at that time desperately needed to believe that their boys had fought and died for a higher purpose. Thus, even those war memorials which included an element referring to the pity of war, and the need to end all war (such as the sword-breaker on Skipton’s memorial in the High Street), there was almost always also an allusion to the principles of heroic sacrifice, Victory, and duty to King and country (such as the winged statue of Victory at the top of Skipton’s cenotaph).

The role of the Church of England in formulating war remembrance services, even at memorials outside the confines of the church building, was evident nationwide as soon as the war ended, and is a feature that is still very strong today. 

Nevertheless, the ceremony at Embsay was very ecumenical (this wasn’t always the case at other places). Representatives were present from the Church of England (Rev. Charles Vernon Brown, the vicar of Embsay); the New Jerusalem Church (also known as the Swedenborgians ; the Rev. Edward John Pulsford was at that time a minister in Birmingham); the Primitive Methodists (Mr. A. J. Clayton of the Primitive Methodist Commission); and the Wesleyan Methodists (Mr. Edmund Lund, secretary of the local branch of the Co-operative Society, and a prominent local Wesleyan).

The choir too were comprised of members from different denominations – they were accompanied on the piano by Miss Earnshaw. Now 40 years old, Mary Earnshaw had been born and brought up in Embsay, and after 10 years as a teacher in Keighley had returned in 1915, to become the head teacher of Embsay National School. Her brother, Robert, had recently died in March at the Schoolhouse on East Lane, where Mary, and another brother, lived with their parents. Since his demobilisation from the South Wales Borderers Regiment, Robert had been suffering from tuberculosis, which had been officially recognised as caused by his service in the trenches. Nevertheless, he was never formally recognised as one of the “war dead” and consequently was not named on the war memorial.

The presence of a minister from Birmingham can partly be explained by the prominence that Edward John Pulsford (1878-1952) [pictured above]  held within the Swedenborgian Church – it is probable he had been invited by the Embsay chapel to add prestige to their delegation at the ceremony. Although born in Jersey, in the Channel Islands, Pulsford was brought up in London. He came from a family that over several generations produced a significant number of ministers in the New Church. Edward, the son of an engraver, trained as an architectural draughtsman. He was ordained into the New Church in 1905, and in 1920 was appointed President the New Church General Conference. After serving as a minister in Birmingham he was to go on to missionary work in South Africa, became editor of the New Church Magazine, and served a second term as the Conference President in 1941. He died in Gloucestershire in 1952. 

By contrast, Alfred John Clayton and Edmund Lund were both local men.  The Primitive Methodist delegate to the ceremony, Clayton had been born in Nottinghamshire, but had begun his working career as a teenage goods clerk at the Midland Railway station in Cononley. A self-made man, he had by the early 1920s made himself a successful businessman, and the owner of the Corn Mill at Millbridge in Skipton. [His shop on the High Street can be seen in the postcard  pictured below.] He died in 1946, with probate records valuing his estate at nearly £5,000.    

Edmund Lund also had humble beginnings. Born in 1846 at Thornton-in-Craven, the son of a farmer, he had begun his working life at the age of 14 as a power loom weaver, until in his early 30s he became a shop manager for the Co-operative Society in Drighlington. He returned to Craven to become a manager for the Skipton branch, and in 1915 retired to Daisy Cottage, on Main Street, Embsay.  Already an established and prominent member of the Wesleyan circuit based in Skipton, he continued to be active in the Methodist church at Embsay. At the time of the dedication of the war memorial he had only recently been widowed, his second wife, Sarah Ann, having died in June 1920. Edmund himself died at Daisy Cottage in 1924, at the age of 77.

Pictured below: A.J. Clayton, wearing a chef’s hat for an event at Trinity Methodist Church, Skipton.  

Setting the tone for the underlying theme of the dedication service at Embsay’s cenotaph was the opening hymn, which begins: “For all the Saints who from their labours rest”, with its references to soldiers, the well fought fight “when the strife is fierce, the warfare long”, and warriors going to their rest in Paradise.

This was followed by the hymn “O God our help in ages past”, 3 Bible readings, the Lord’s Prayer, and another prayer to bless the memorial. Lt.-Col. Charles Malcolm Bateman, D.S.O. (1885-1952), a mill owner of Glusburn, gave a short address and unveiled the memorial. He had been in the Territorials since at least 1902, and had served in France during the Great War with the 1/6^th Duke of Wellington’s (West Riding Regiment). As a decorated war hero, Bateman was a popular choice for unveiling war memorials in the Craven area, and had in March 1920 been invited to unveil the memorial brass plaque inside St Mary’s Church, Embsay. His speech at the Embsay cenotaph in 1921 is further evidence of the prevailing attitudes in 1921 to the war which had ended just 3 years previously. He declared:

“I unveil this Memorial erected as an abiding witness of the love for Freedom, Truth, Justice and Mercy, which moved the heart of this country to enter into war; and also in proud and grateful memory of those connected with Embsay-with-Eastby who gave their lives in that great struggle.”

This was followed by a reading of the names of the soldiers killed, the playing of “The Last Post”, and then a one-minute silence. The “Reveille” (also known as “Hope of Resurrection”) was then played, and 3 prayers offered by Archdeacon H.L. Cook, of Skipton. Finally, the Archdeacon gave a short dedication of the memorial, in which he reiterated Lt.-Col. Bateman’s message of the sacrifice the soldiers had made – only he placed emphasis on the spirit the men had shown for “our Empire and our race”, a Victorian viewpoint which was still dominant in the early 1920s.

It is interesting that when the Skipton War Memorial was unveiled the following year, in April 1922, the focus had already started to shift, with the Craven Herald making references to the “wickedness of war”, while the chairman of the Skipton War Memorial Committee declared: “we want no more war, we have had enough of it.” Nevertheless, a familiar dedication came from Skipton’s rector, Cook, as he repeated Lt.-Col. Bateman’s words of 1921 in Embsay, calling the Skipton monument a witness to the “love for freedom, truth, justice and mercy which moved the heart of this nation to enter the war.”

The Craven Herald, in its report on the dedication ceremony at Embsay’s memorial, included a detailed list of the wreaths and floral tributes laid at the base of the cenotaph – with the names as inscribed on the wreaths, and the names of those who had contributed them. This is the most poignant part of the report, as these were the individual tributes of people grieving for their loved ones. Some soldiers were given multiple wreaths from different people – the Inman brothers (William and John) were remembered by no less than 7 floral tributes, as were the Read brothers (Tom and Sam). James Willie Scott, who at the age of 19 had been the first local lad to be killed in action, was the subject of 6 tributes. Two wreaths were simply adorned with the single word “Dad” – donated by “Bessie” (probably the 8 year old daughter of William Inman) and “Sally” (possibly her 7 year old sister Sarah Ellen).  Five tributes were made by local organisations: the Cricket Club, St Mary’s Church, the War Memorial Committee, the “fellow-workmen” of Charles Gant (killed at the age of 39 in 1917, he had been a warehouseman for John and Arthur Davy’s grocery business at Cross End in Embsay since the age of 13), and Embsay Manufacturing Company (the firm which operated from what is now Embsay Mills had employed at least two of the war dead – Sam Read and Lewis Hull Phillip).

Most intriguing were the flowers dedicated to “Nurse Moorby”, presented by “Hilda”. This nurse is not named on the Embsay memorial, and she does not appear to have had any direct connection to the parish. A wreath to her had already been laid in August 1919, at the temporary cenotaph in Skipton (before the stone memorial was erected in 1922), dedicated to “Nurse Moorby” from Mrs Sutcliffe and daughter Annie. It is not known how Mrs Sutcliffe knew Hilda Moorby. “Nurse Moorby” was Hilda Moorby, a cotton weaver from Skipton. During the war she had served as a VAD nurse (Voluntary Aid Detachment), in the West Riding of Yorkshire Reserves, at the 2nd Western General Military Hospital (this Hospital was comprised of several different sites scattered across Manchester and Stockport – it is not recorded exactly on which of these sites Hilda worked). She had entered the service on 1^st August 1918, but tragically died of broncho-pneumonia just over 2 months later, on 8^th October 1918 – she was 23 years old. Her name does not appear on any of the local memorials as the Commonwealth War Graves Commission did not officially recognise her as a casualty of war until 2018. However, her name was added to the memorial in York Minister which is dedicated to women who lost their lives in the First World War. Hilda died at the nurse’s home in Alexandra Park, in Stockport, and was buried at Waltonwrays Cemetery, Skipton. Her parents had previously suffered the loss of their son, John William, who served with the King’s Royal Rifle Corps, and died at Thiepval in February 1917.

The woman who laid the wreath in Hilda Moorby’s memory at Embsay also happened to be named Hilda, but without a surname being recorded it is difficult to be certain who she was. The most likely candidate is Hilda Connell, who in 1921 is known to have been a nurse at the Eastby Sanatorium. She was perhaps Hilda May Connell, born in 1884 in London, and brought up in Hereford, the daughter of a jeweller and pawnbroker. In the 1911 Census she was recorded as a ‘sick nurse’, employed in the private household of a wine merchant, in Canterbury. Perhaps Hilda Connell had worked alongside Hilda Moorby at Stockport, and as a former colleague, took the opportunity to lay a token in her friend’s memory at the cenotaph ceremony which happened to take place in Embsay. But in the absence of more information this can only be speculation.

A second unveiling took place in August 1948 by Col F Longden-Smith after the names of the dead of the Second World War were added to the inscriptions.

Great credit is due to local resident, Hazel Chatwin, who as a parish councillor, successfully campaigned with former squadron leader, Frank Stokes (who had served in World War Two), to have the memorial professionally cleaned in 2013 ahead of the centenary of the outbreak of World War One. While the cenotaph on Main Street is the most visible of war memorials in Embsay-with-Eastby, there is a surprising number of other memorials scattered around the parish: the brass plaque, and one of the stained glass windows inside the church; the plaque inside the Methodist chapel on Main Street; another plaque in the Cricket Club; and a poignant private memorial to a beloved son in an Eastby garden. Sadly only a few residents will be aware that the recreation ground and the village institute (originally a hut transplanted from the old POW camp in Skipton at Raikes Road, and opened in October 1920) were also intended to be lasting memorials to the war dead – they were both the gift of Wallace Brooksbank, owner of the tannery which then stood in what is now the Primrose Glen estate. Many such memorials – village halls, hospitals, scout huts, and other local community facilities and charities, were established across the nation in memory of those killed in action, but their original dedication is now mostly forgotten.

Pictured below: The stained glass window and the memorial brass plaque inside St Mary’s Church and the Cricket Club Memorial plaque.

In addition to the stained glass window, there were other, smaller memorials in St Mary’s Church, of a more personal nature. In 1919 an anonymous donation was made to St. Mary’s, of a brass lectern dedicated to the men who had fallen in the war.  This is still often in use, although many congregants may be unaware of its dedication. Mrs Mary Wakefield gifted an oak credence table in memory of her nephew, Christopher Wilkinson Brown; and Mary’s sister, Miss Ann Richmond Wilkinson, donated four silver altar vases in Christopher’s memory.  

Pictured above: the oak table inside St Mary’s Church, carved with an inscription dedicated to Christopher Wilkinson Brown.

Elsewhere in the village, there are two memorial plaques – one inside the Methodist Chapel on Main Street – which lists five names – and the other in the Cricket Club. The cricket club memorial lists nine names, including one that is not included on the cenotaph on Main Street: Oliver Riley, a keen cricket player, had lived at Embsay Kirk from 1912, but enlisted in 1916. After he was killed in May 1918, his wife and family moved away to Southend-on-Sea. It is not clear why his name was omitted from the cenotaph.

Pictured above: the brass memorial plaque in the Methodist Chapel on Main Street, Embsay.

Last, but not least, a private memorial was erected by Rawleigh Humphries, of Bridgend House, Eastby, the heartbroken father of 20-year old Walter, killed in July 1916.

In a little ceremony attended by friends from the Primitive Methodist congregation, the carved stone pillar was unveiled in the garden in October 1917, to honour Walter – and his mother, Susannah, who had died a month after receiving news of her last surviving son’s death. 

Copies of the book “Though lost to sight, to memory ever dear; Embsay-with-Eastby First World War Roll of Honour” (2018), providing biographies of Embsay and Eastby’s World War One dead, are still available for purchase from Jane Lunnon at £10 each. 

For more information on the memorial window in St Mary’s Church, there is a booklet available inside the church, which can be purchased for £4.

Author: Jane Lunnon, Embsay-with-Eastby Historical Research Group ; August 2021