Presentation of 435 War Memorial Transcriptions to Barnsley Archives

BWMP Committee Members Sandra Birkinshaw, Linda Hutton and Gill Brookes present our folders to Paul Stebbing of Barnsley Archives (photo by Barnsley Council)

Three folders, 435 War memorials, 11k names

On Tuesday 23rd September the Barnsley War Memorials Project presented three folders (pictured above) to Barnsley Archives.  Produced by our Information Officer, Pete Schofield, by collating submissions from over 50 local people who have photographed and transcribed war memorials for us, the folders contain listings of 435 war memorials (at 23/09/2014) and a total of more than 11,000 names from the First and Second World wars, the Boer War and post-1945 conflicts such as the Falklands War and Afghanistan.  

These three folders are now available for everyone to use on the open shelves in Barnsley Archives and will be constantly updated as new information comes in.

Our presentation coincided with the installation of the new glass panels commemorating soldiers of the First World War in the Barnsley Pals Centenary Square which were dedicated later in the week at the official opening of the Experience Barnsley 'Road to War' exhibition.

Unfortunately despite the submission of a detailed press release to both the Council and the Barnsley Chronicle our presentation appears to have been misunderstood by the Council (who do not mention the folders' contents in their news item) and was omitted from that week's edition of the Barnsley Chronicle - though admitedly we did make the front cover of the local free newspaper, the Barnsley Independent the following week.

Barnsley Independent 30 September 2014

However, again, the item does not actually mention what the folders contain, merely stating that the folder pictured was "one of three books the group has made during its first year of research".

It is important to state that the production of these 435 (and counting, 441 as of today, 8 October 2014) lists of names is only the first stage towards the advertised aim of the Barnsley War Memorials Project to produce a Roll of Honour of Barnsley's First World War Fallen.  

Our next step is to bid for Heritage Lottery Funding in order to create an Online Database which can be used to store and sort the names of the men thus far collected, adding sufficient personal information to make each man individually identifiable. It will also used to produce an alphabetical list of names, something we have not been able to do so far, and this index list will be produced in paper format to be deposited at Barnsley Archives alongside our recent donation of the War Memorial Inscriptions folders.

In order to bid for Heritage Lottery Funding we will need the support of the wider Barnsley community as well as Barnsley Council, Barnsley Archives and media organisations such as the Barnsley Chronicle, Dearne FM, BBC Radio Sheffield and so on.  

Our project is similar to others across the country such as the Tynemouth World War One Commemoration Project (1,700 names) in the North East of England and in West Yorkshire Craven's Part in the Great War (1,866 names) but we are aiming to include over 5,000 names.

Please could anyone with advice or suggestions about how we can raise awareness of our project across a wider audience in Barnsley contact us.  

We can be reached by email at BWMP2015@gmail.com or you can contact us via Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/BarnsleyWarMemorialsProject) and via Twitter (@BnslyWarMems).   

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