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I CLITHEROEflDVERTISER&TIMES '
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www.clithoroeadvertiser.co.uk Thursday,Ju!y3,2014
Thursday,July3,2014
www.clitheroeadvertiser.co.uk CUTHEROEADVERTISERSi TIMES FIRSTWORLDWAR Remembering the Valley men
who made the ultimate sacrifice First in a new series of features about those who lost their lives during the Great War
FEATURE
acloserlookatthoselocalmen who paid the ultimate sacrifice. The life stories behind those men who are named on the war memorial at Clitheroe Castle will be told thanks to Clitheroe historian Shirley Penman. Shirley has researched the full details of the men whose names feature on the war me morial and we will be running a selection of their stories, ranging from the account about Clitheroe “crack” air man Lieut. Louis Leeming to that of drummer boy Joseph ArthurTownsend. All of the stories are poignant and give readers the oppor tunity to discover the local role of local men in the First World War. War was declared at 11 pm on
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n the run up to the cen tenary of the outbreak of the First World War during the next five weeks we will be taking
August 4th, 1914. To mark the centenary, library volunteers Shirley Penman and Dorothy Falshawhave shared several years of research and col lated information they have gathered into a book giving details ofthe324men from the Clitheroe area who died in the conflict. This book can be found in the research/local studies sec tion in Clitheroe Library and . gives military details of each man with his grave or memo rial site and family details where possible. Dorothy has documented eve ry mention of local soldiers . from each issue of the Clit heroe Advertiser arid Times during the years 1914 to 1920. She then rechecked them all in case she had missed someone! All this information has been typed into a database, which is proving invaluable to the staff of the library when ap proached for requests of details about military ances tors for family trees. These
AuthorShirley Penman.
requests can come from as far afield as America, Africa or Australia. Shirley has found Dorothy’s database invaluable, as she has researched full details of
Photo: ANDREWSCOTT
the men whose names are on the C;itheroe war memorial. For most she has found serv ice numbers, their regiment, date of death, age, family, and, in some cases, the cause of
death.Shirley’s grandfather, John Robert Ouington, suf fered from mustard gas poi soning at the Battle of the Lys. He died aged30 leaving a wid ow and daughter only eight years old. She was Shirley’s mother, Emily Elizabeth, later Mrs George Yates. Two of Emily’s cousins, sons of her father’s twin brother, were to die in the Second World War and it was this which ignited Shirley’s great interest in military research. • Both boys had death cer tificates which stated only somewhere in North Western Europe as the place of death. After visiting their war graves in Bergen-Op-Zoom, Holland, and Brussels town cemetery at Everte with her mum on an emotional trip, Shirley was determined to find out just where they died and the cir cumstances which surround ed their deaths. Emily Yates died in 2012 aged almost 92 satisfied that the mystery of “where” and “how” had been resolved in both
cases. Dorothy has published a booklet relating to the war
memorial at Gisburn, the vil lage where she lives.
Shirley, meanwhile, has pub lished a booklet on the men
and one woman whose names are on the Second World War
plaque at Clitheroe Garden of Remembrance. There has been ongoing re search about the surround ing Ribble Valley villages of Sawley, Pendleton, Barrow, Wiswell, Dunsop Bridge, etc, as well as the Boer War and what was St Mary’s Military Hospital, Whalley (Calder- stones). Both women take trips to the Harris Library in Preston to glean titbits from the Preston Guardian on a regular basis and have been able to help John Richardson in his quest for more details for the sol diers featured on the website Craven’s Part in the Great War, with his area overlap ping with theirs before the Lancashire/ Yorkshire border changes.
Nick’s swim for his brave niece English Channel challenge to raise £ 5 0 ,0 0 0 for hydrotherapy pool for brave Bel
BvFaizaAfzaai,
faiza.afzaal@
jpress.co.uk Twitter@clithadvertiser
Four years ago, aged just eight years old, Bel Young suffered a catastrophic and life changing accident.
Whilst playing on a climbing frame, Bel fell and broke her neck. Her mother, Vanessa, ran to the scene of the accident and gave her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation until the ambu lance arrived- an act which un doubtedly saved her life. Now, paralysed from the
neck down, the 12-year-old is confined to a wheelchair and reliant for much of the time on a ventilator to breathe. She re quires 24-hour care and physi otherapy for up to two hours a day.
Her uncle, Nick Young is at
tempting to swim the English Channel this September and is hoping to raise £50,000 to buy Bel a hydrotherapy pool. Until recently father-of-
three Nick (43), who lives in Rimington with his wife, Jo, did everything he could to avoid too much contact with cold water- the limited experience he had of swimming consisted of be ing dragged off to the local pool on a Saturday morning with his children, who all attend Pend- le Primary School, Clitheroe. However, it was until he went to watch Bel, who previously lived in Skipton, but has now moved to Harrogate, take part in a hy drotherapy session. “It was really hard to watch
what Bel was put through dur ing the session,” explained Nick, who works as head of re-
of a solo channel swim to try and raise enough money to buy a hy drotherapy pool for her to use at home. The channel presents an enormous challenge - at its- shortest point the crossing is 21 miles, but currents arid condi tions meari swimmers can end up swimming many more miles in total.” He added: “It isn’t just the
Nick Young andhis 12-year-old niece, Bel. (s)
gional sales at Channel 5.. “Her her. Bel faces enormous chal- physio,Mark,toldmeitwasthe lenges every minute of every day equivalent of running a mara- ofher life, little things that we all thon, but she tried her hardest take for granted are impossible at everything she was asked to for her. She never grumbles or do. I came away determined that feelssorryfor herself andlde- I wanted to do something to help cidedtoset myself the challenge
Squash chief Susan off to the Palace
Ribble Valley lady Susan Meadows is having dinner with a prince at Buckingham Palace next week. Susan, whose family home
is at West Bradford, has land ed a royal appointment with Prince Edward, the Earl Of Wessex, at a special gala luncheon at the palace ahead of this month’s Common wealth Games in Glasgow. “It is1 an amazing honour
hree soldiers from Bolton-by-Bow- land all lost their lives in the First World War.
Privates Dawson Parkin son and Samuel Hayhurst (Pinder) were officially re ported as having been miss ing since May 3rd, 1917, and, not long after, in early June, Mr and Mrs Brotherton, of Brookside Cottages, received word that their son, Private Ben Brotherton, 2nd/6th Duke ofWellington’s West Riding Regiment, had gone missing in action on the same date. He was 25 and had
joined up on March 22nd, 1916. The last letter received from him was dated April 29th.
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Private Hayhurst joined the West Yorkshire Regiment on October 23rd, 1916 and had been in France for six months.Hewas36. Here is Clitheroe historian Shirley Penman’s historical record of the other soldier, Private Dawson Parkinson, who also lost his life during the Great War. Private Parkinson (23716),
Private Dawson Parkinson
2nd Battalion, Prince of Wales (West Riding Regi ment), died aged 38 on De- cember22nd,1917,from . starvation iri a German prison camp. He is buried in grave VII F.i. Berlin South Western Cemetery, Berlin, Germany. ThesonofJohn and Sarah Ellen (nee Chew), they were married on March 30th, 1878, at SS Peter and Paul Church, Bolton-by- Bowland. Private Parkinson
was the husband of Alice Ann (nee Life) and they were also married in 1905 at SS Peter and Paul, Bolton-by- Bowland. Their address was given as Nook Cottage, Bolton-by- Bowland, and father-of-two Dawson Parkinson, who before joining up was a gar dener at Bolton Hall, enlisted on August 12th, 1916, going to France on January 9th, 1917, after training. He would have taken part in the first Battle of the Scarpe between April 9-i4th, 1917. and the thirrd Battle of the Scarpe on May 3rd-4th that year. Dawson was taken prisoner on the first day of this en gagement and wrote to his wife acquainting her with this fact in a letter received on July3rd, 1917. It would ap pear that Dawson was then transported to Germany and moved from camp to camp, including Doeberitz and Al- thdam where he subsequent- lydied. His wife received a letter to this effect on January 25th, 1918. In the Craven Herald edition of February 1st, 1918,
a letter appeared which told of the anger of the residents of Gisburn at the horrific treatment meted out to Daw son, who was their “adopted” prisoner of war”. The whole village plus family and friends had saved small amounts each week until a certain amount was reached and every five days a splen did parcel - one of which contained a complete outfit ofclothes-wouldbesent in their name to Dawson. He never received one and is believed to have starved to death as the last postcard he wrote the week before he died spoke of “two loaves of bread between 13 of us” (pre- • vious to adopting Dawson,
the village’s POWhad been Private Harry Leeson, who
had been a postman at Gis burn, and who had shared the same horrific fate).
In a later edition of the Cra ven Herald his wife thanked
the people of Gisburn and said she would never forget
their kindness. She regretted that Dawson had never had the comfort of knowing all thatwasdoneforhim.
Clitheroe, survived five years of hell fighting in “the war to end all wars” only to die almost a year later.
L
Lance Corporal Alston served with the Military Foot Police, Military Foot Corps. He died aged 42 on March31st,, 1919 from pneumonia. Lance Corporal Alston is bur ied in grave 754 at St Maty’s Cemetery, Waddington Road, Clitheroe. He was the son of James and Margaret Alston (nee Dixon) who were mar ried on October 12th, 1873, at
Clitheroe Parish Church.
William was the third of the five sons of James and Mar garet to sacrifice their lives
for their country in the First WorldWar. Firstly, Dixon,
aged 27, died in 1915, then Thomas,aged32,in 1917,and
finally William,aged42,in 1919;
William had emigrated to Canada to find a better life in
1903 and must have travelled because when his country
ance Corporal William Alston (P/8023), who hailed from 106 St Paul’s Street, Low Moor,
called he returned from Arizona. Initially he enlisted
in the Sussex Regiment, but was then seconded to the Military Police. Little is known of his service, buthe must have remained in the Army after the Armistice, because in early 1919 he was struck down by the deadly influenza virus which killed more people than the First World War. Unfortunately, he deteriorat ed and the influenza turned to pneumonia, as it tended to do before the days of antibi otics and William died on March 31st, 1919, in the Royal Victoria Hospital, Newcas- tle-upon-iyne, after living through the five years of hell which was the war to end all wars. His body wasbrought home to Clitheroe by train and he was interred with fuU military honours at St Mary s Cemetery, Clitheroe, on April 5th, 1919. His aged parents, James, then 74. and Margaret,
75, must have been devastated to buryyetanotheroftheir sons. James died the follow ing year while Margaret died five years later.
and I’m really looking forward to visiting Buckingham Palace for this special occasion,” she said. “Prince Edward is very in
terested in the positive benefit sport can have on health and the overall contribution that sport can make to improving people’s well-being.” A former community
Susan Meadows who will attend a gala luncheonat Buckingham Palace next week, (s)
nurse at Slaidburn and Clit- pointed the interim chief ex- heroe and who played squash ecutive officer for England for the county, Susan was ap- Squash and Racketball earli
Banding together
After the huge success of a na- the calendar, but this time kedcalendarwhichraisedmore wanted to do somethingjust than £18,000 for Pancreatic to celebrate Mick’s memo- Cancer UK in memory of Clit- ry and to remember him on heroe man Dr Mick Barsby, his his birthday. We’ve had the family have come up with an- phrase ‘Man Up for Mick’ put other charity supporting idea on the bands as that’s what he to celebrate what would have used to say to the boys when been his 44th birthday.
they needed a bit of motiva- Family and friends from the tion. We hope the bands will
family’s gym Crossfit in Clithe- remind people to think about roe, modelled for the calendar others and what they may be which went on to sell more than going through, whatever their 1,500 copies. Now, Mick’s wife struggle.” Sue and sons Christian (18), Onethousand wristbands James (18) and Oliver (14) have have been produced and are comieupwiththeideaofselling available in Clitheroe from wristbands, this time to help lo- Sarah Rose gift shop, Tallulah cal charity The Sanctuary.
Jo’s Nails and Beauty, Crossfit
Sue commented: “We were gymandin WhalleyfromSaks blown away by the success of Hair and Beauty.
James, Oliver, Sue and Christian Barsby with their Man Up For Mick wristbands, on sale to raise money for local charity The Sanctuary.
er this year and her work has helped improve the sport’s profile nationally. It has proved a huge year
for the sport with Lancashire’s Laura Massaro becoming the first English woman to hold both the world and British Open squash titles and she looks set to compete in Glas gow. “Laura Massaro is a fan
tastic role model, and she has achieved so much for squash,” added Susan, who will attend the gala luncheon on Wednes day July 9th. She added: “I’ve travelled
all over England in the last few months and heard fantas tic feedback from all sorts of people about squash and it has made me aware of the need to help grow our sport further.”
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distance that’s the challenge, high winds and wave heights in excess of two metres plus jel lyfish, seaweed and floating de bris. It is also one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world with 600 tankers and 200 ferries/ othervesselsgoingacross daily.” Nick’s goal is to raise a stag
gering £50,000 and he has al most raised £46,000. He said: “Bel is a brave little
girl - the daily challenges she faces inspire me to complete
this challenge. I thank’you from thebottomofmyheartforhelp- ing me reach my target. “Physiotherapy ishard work
for Bel, but is a vital part ofher day and due to her determina tion and positive attitude, sheis starting to make progress. “I’m determined to raise the
money as the hydrotherapy pool will make such a big difference toBelandher family’s life. “This form of aquatic thera
py is enormously beneficial to her as part ofher weekly rou tine of physiotherapy - the wa ter supports her and allows her muscles to relax, meaning she can achieve so much more in the pool than on dry land.” Anyone wishing to support
Nick should log onto https://
www.justgiving.com/NickY- oungChannelSwim/ and make a pledge.
^Z-ianufjo’nniJuj ifon? home....
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