What an extraordinary piece of research James Castle has done on the names on the Hartfield War Memorial.
In his brilliantly illustrated talk we learned about nearly every name on the memorial from both the First and the Second World Wars. Many were illustrated with the houses they lived in as Hartfield residents, the regiment they belonged to, the war grave where they were buried and even the headstone. Numbers had unknown graves and at least three were complete mysteries although their names were read out at each ceremony. A mass burial and one at sea had also been discovered
We learnt that some had their names inscribed on more than one memorial and one or two whose names were inscribed on as many as six memorials.
During his researches James has uncovered 15 more combatants and, by the efforts of Dan Maher the Parish Council agreed to pay for the addition of these names to the memorial – which were added to a rear plaque by a stonemason from Burselem’s with the apt name of Hartfield!
We hope to be able to add a section to the Hartfield History Website in due course with this important detail for future family researchers.
The talk was followed by several interesting comments from the audience and one or two ‘leads’ for James to follow up in his continuing researches!
If anybody has anything to add regarding the War Memorial please use the website ‘Leave a Reply’ which you can find in several places but easily by clicking on ‘History of the Parish’
