Crosthwaite’s Peter Windsor describes the influence of the Great War in the Lyth Valley

 

ALMOST 100 years ago in early August 1914, the German Army marched into Belgium to strike at France. The following day Britain declared war, and so started the bloody four years of the Great War.

Within days the men of the small British Expeditionary Force were in action in Belgium, but Lord Kitchener, the Secretary of State for War, realised that a much larger army would be required and called for volunteers for a New Army. All over the country young, and not so young, men answered the call, to form the largest volunteer army ever created.

In the parish church of St Mary, Crosthwaite, are memorials to the men of the parish who died in the Great War. When the memorials were placed there, soon after the end of the war, everyone would have known the men.

Now, 100 years later, they are just names at best, noted when they are read out each year on Remembrance Day.

It seemed a fitting time, as the centenary of the start of the war approaches, to try to see them for what they were; men, mostly young, from a close village community from the South Lakes who had homes and aspirations and loves which they gave up to fight for King and Country and a cause which they believed in.

That is what I have tried to do in my booklet ‘Poppies in the Lyth Valley’. In a total population of a few hundred, some 80 men joined the army, of whom 20 died, leaving behind older men, women and children to cope with the hard physical work of keeping farms and small businesses going.

While most came from agricultural and related occupations, there were a few exceptions. George Stewardson, the son of the Crosthwaite blacksmith, was head footman to the Earl of Buccleuch when war broke out, probably when they were living in the family’s London house, and promptly volunteered.

John Thornborrow, a cousin of George Stewardson, had shown an ability at languages while at school, and was also working in London, for Thomas Cook. Having previously joined one of the London Territorial Regiments, he was mobilised when war broke out and arrived in France early in 1915 to replace the heavy losses incurred during the retreat from Mons the previous year.

He died in March 1915 near Armentieres, only six months after leaving his promising job, the first of the Crosthwaite men to die.

Not all were young, the oldest being Charles Abraham, headmaster of Crosthwaite School, who was 51 when he enlisted, giving his age as 38. He became a Sergeant in the Royal Army Medical Corps and served in Military hospitals in France before being invalided home and dying in hospital in Glasgow.

Most of those who died did so when serving in the trenches in France and Flanders, or of wounds or illness after being returned to England.

However one, Sergeant James Hutchinson, died in the heat and dust of Mesopotamia on the banks of the Tigris, in present day Iraq. He and others had also been at Gallipoli, and at least one served in Salonika.

Those who survived returned to their lives on the land in South Westmorland. Few ever wanted to talk of their experiences; no one who had not been there seemed to understand and most wanted just to try to forget; they must have been very conscious of the missing faces around them.

* ‘Poppies in the Lyth Valley’, is available from Crosthwaite Church and Bowland Bridge Stores, £3, or by post from the author at 1, Dodds Howe, Crosthwaite LA8 8HX price £3.75.Cheques payable to EPL Windsor Poppies.