In 1947 a committee was set up for a memorial to those who had died in the 1939-1945 war. The memorial was paid for by a subscription that was managed by the committee. In December 1947, an advert for this appeal was placed in the Lancashire Evening Post with the secretary of the appeal being Roger Houghton living in “The Cottage.”
Names for the memorial were invited as were ideas for the memorial as it was not then assumed that it would be added to the existing WW1 memorial. The committee was then offered the area on the east side of the road opposite the WW1 memorial by the Dickson family to offer a way of “contemplating” the memorial across from the WW1 War memorial.
The idea of a bench of contemplation was suggested by the women's fundraising group and the Dicksons offered to plant behind the bench area with a coppice of trees. On the west side, it was agreed that the WW1 memorial would be enhanced by an area of paving, railings, and behind it a sandstone altar with on either side of this panels for the names of those who had died in the WW2.
After much debate it was agreed that an inscription would be added to the sandstone altar:
TRANQUIL YOU LIE YOUR KNIGHTLY VIRTUE PROVED
YOUR MEMORY HALLOWED IN THE LAND YOU LOVE
1914-1918
(This is taken from “O Valiant Hearts” a hymn remembering the fallen of the 1st World War, with words from a poem by Sir John Stanhope Arkwright [1872–1954].)
In 1948 in time for the Armistice service in November the memorial was completed and dedicated with twenty-five names, one of which was a woman.
Biographies
Corporal Denis Anthony Bentley
Born on 19 April 1923 in Preston and died 16 March 1945 at the RN Auxiliary Hospital, Colombo, Ceylon of Acute Anterior Poliomyelitis, aged 21. He is buried at Liveramentu, Colombo, Ceylon (plot two row B) and is on the memorial tablets.
Denis served in the Royal Marines, reg. number CH/X 107221; his last posting was on HMS Lanka. He was the only child of Thomas and Elizabeth Mary Bentley who were married in 1922. In 1921 Thomas was a schoolmaster at St Augustine’s R/C Boys’ School in Preston but sadly died in 1925. He had been in WW1 in the RAF (278016). His widowed mother (née Dawson) is mentioned in Denis’s probate record. His mother lived at 35 South Drive, Broughton at the time of his death.
Sergeant Ronald John Buckley
Born on 7 September 1920 in Salford and died in the North Sea on 13 August 1940. He is remembered on Panel 12, Eaglefield Green, Runnymede.
He was based at Scampton, Lincolnshire, in the 83rd Squadron Bomber Control, and was a Wireless Operator/Gunner. Service number 987980. He died when his plane was hit by flak during a raid on the Dortmund-Ems Canal; the plane is presumed to have crashed in the North Sea on its return journey.
Ronald was the son of John and Laura Buckley (née Butterfield) of 12 Broadway, Broughton. His father was a travelling salesman in food products. In the 1939 register he is listed as a clerk at Leyland Paints.
Aircraftman 2nd Class Thomas Leonard Cain
Born in 1920 and died 3 August 1940. He died aged twenty and is buried in All Saints Graveyard, Yatesbury, Wiltshire.
He enlisted in the RAF(VR) in 1939 and his service number was 970745. The 1939 register states he was an unemployed shoe salesman who had enlisted in the RAF reserve and was awaiting to be called up.
His parents were Thomas William Keig and Edith Annie (née Cowley) Cain who had married in 1919 at Braddon on the Isle of Man where his mother came from. In 1939 his father was employed by the Post Office Telephone Service. They lived at 14 Windsor Drive in 1904.
Radio Officer Bryan Inglis Cannell
Born on 2 April 1920 in Ratcliffe, Lancashire and died at sea aged twenty-two on 14 August 1942. He is remembered on Panel Nine of the Tower Hill Memorial.
In 1939 he is described as being at “wireless school.” He was a Radio Officer 1st Class in the Merchant Navy on board the SS Arabiston (London) and received the King’s Commendation for Bravery. Service Number 161272.
His parents were Walter Reah and Jane Susannah Cannell (his father was born in Yorkshire and his mother in Lowestoft). They lived at Horsell, Garstang Road, Broughton. His father was the manager of Barclays Bank in Preston. By the time of Bryan’s probate they had moved to Chelsea, London. Jane died in 1946; Walter remarried twice and died in New Zealand in 1956, where his other son Walter had moved to in 1952.
Sergeant Arthur Carr
Born in the second quarter of 1915 at Beesley Farm, Haighton and died on 23 September 1942 in Egypt aged twenty-seven. He is remembered at the Alexandria Hara Cemetery. WMG3K9. His memorial says, “Loved and remembered by all in Grimsagh.”
Arthur was in the RAF, service number 531901, based in Aboukir, Egypt. His parents were Arthur and Elizabeth Carr (née Morris) of Beesleys Farm, Haighton. In the 1921 census Arthur senior was described as a farmer with five children.
Flight Sergeant Clifford Carr
Born on 28 October 1912 in Newcastle upon Tyne and was lost at sea in the North Atlantic on 7 December 1942 aged thirty. He is remembered on Panel Seventy-Three at the RAF memorial at Runnymede.
Clifford was a member of the 102 Squadron RAF Volunteer Reserve. He was based at the airbase in Pocklington, Yorkshire, service number 1378971. His parents were Norman and Sarah Carr of Haighton. He married Annie Dougall in 1912; they had no children. The 1939 census has his occupation as a Corporation Clerk in the Health Department.
Sargeant John Edward Chadwick
John Edward Chadwick was born in 1922 at Woodside Park, in Barnet, Greater London. He was the son of Samuel Edwin Chadwick (b. 1894 in Preston) and Ethel Burdett. John was buried at Reichswald Forest War Cemetery in Germany and is also commemorated in the archive of the Woodside Park Residents’ Association.
John was a sergeant pilot in the RAF Volunteer Reserve, 7th Squadron, with the service number 1109519. He was killed in action on the 8th of November 1941, aged just nineteen. He lost his life when his plane, a Stirling N3677, crashed at Alsum-Duisberg, a major target for Allied strategic bombing campaigns. His aircraft departed RAF Oakington (Bomber Command) in Cambridge at 17.31 hours on an operation to Berlin and was shot down by a German nightfighter before crashing and killing the entire crew of seven. In the 1911 Census John’s grandfather, Edwin Chadwick, and his family were living at 49 Black Bull Lane (here is the Broughton connection). By 1921, John’s father, Samuel, aged twenty-seven, a pharmacist/chemist, was living in Tynemouth and working for a company there.
Sargeant Pilot Geoffrey Thomas Chapman
Geoffrey Thomas Chapman was born in Rochdale on the 3rd of January 1917 and died aged twenty-five on a dive-bombing exercise over the western top of the Isle of Wight on the 28th of July 1942. He is remembered on the RAF memorial at Runnymede and Fleetwood cemetery.
Geoffrey was a pilot officer based in Gosport with the 2nd Anti-aircraft co-op unit under coastal command. Service number 129144. He was flying a Gladiator 2 and collided with another Gladiator L8030. His parents were John (accountant) & Emily Chapman of 12a Laidlow Walk, Fleetwood. In 1939 he was living in Fleetwood with his widowed father and sister and working with his father as an articled clerk/accountant. He married Marjory (nee Hayes) in the 3rd quarter of 1941, the year before he died. She lived in Fulwood, Preston, and with his father arranged for his gravestone in Fleetwood Cemetery.
Gunner Thomas Crossfield Derham
Gunner Thomas Crossfield Derham was born in Preston on the 18th of April 1910 and died at Cassino, Italy, on the 3rd of December 1943 aged thirty-three. He is buried in the Cassino War Cemetery, X1XE15, in Italy.
Thomas was a gunner in the Royal Artillery, 64th Field Regiment. He was identified from his artillery badge on his cap found in a grave, along with his RA flashes and a signet ring engraved T C D. He was the son of Dr. Thomas Hanson Crossfield and Edith Hannah Derham (nee Richards). Edith was the daughter of a gun maker from Birmingham. His twin brother, William Hanson Denham, was also a doctor. In 1921, he was a boarding school student with his twin brother at Holmwood School in Liverpool. On the 1939 register, his father is noted as being attached to the Duke of Lancaster Yeomanry and was living at Holmwood, Beech Drive, Broughton. His occupation is given as bank clerk.
Captain Anthony Chambre Dickson
Captain Anthony Chambre Dickson was born in Lytham on the 10th of August 1916 and died aged twenty-five on the 5th of December 1941 near Gurun, Malaysia. He is buried in Taiping Cemetery, Llcos, Sur Province, Philippines, plot three, row A, grave ten. He is further remembered in the graveyard of St John Baptist, Broughton.
Anthony was in the 88th Regiment of the Royal Artillery, service number 71053. He was the son of Alfred Eric and Katleen Dickson (nee Yates). Alfred was a chartered surveyor. In 1939, he was living with his parents at Broughton Park and was a 2nd Lt. in the 88th RA regiment. In the 3rd quarter of 1941, he married Olga May Worthington; Olga went on to remarry Major Robert Patch in 1950.
Fernyhalgh War Memorial, Fernyhalgh Lane, Broughton
This memorial is on a quiet lane near the boundary with Haighton Parish. The lane leads down to the shrine at Ladyewell, and the memorial is on the lane edge backing onto the graveyard of the old Roman Catholic Church.
Anecdotal evidence is that the memorial stone base with tilled areas including a cross was originally the site of a statue of the Virgin Mary that had been damaged and removed in 1910.
This memorial is described as a tiled pavement on two stones with a simple “Wayside Latin Cross” in granite inscribed:
“In the name of God of Victories pray for the repose of the souls of the five Fernyhalgh soldiers who gave their lives for King and country during the Great War.
2nd World War Memorial
The “granite plinth” beneath the boulder has a further inscription which was commissioned in 1948 and paid for by the Parochial Church Council; this remembered those loss of the second world war on the left side of the boulder.
The memorial lists the three names as:
Pilot Officer (Peter) Kevin Heller was born in the 2nd qtr. of 1924 in Preston and his plane was lost and he was presumed dead aged twenty over Germany on the April 10th, 1944. He is remembered at the Runnymede manorial panel 211.
Kevin was a pilot officer in the RAF (VR) the 122nd sq. of the tactical air group based at Gravesend, Kent service number 133364. His plane a Mustang 11 was shot down by Naval dissension NW of Texel during a raid near Hamburg. Although he baled out his body was not recovered. He was the son of Ferdinand and Helen May Philomena Heller (nee Kilroe) of Fulwood Lodge, Fernyhalgh. The 1939 register show his father was a sausage casing manufacturer.
Corporal Denis Anthony Bentley was born on the 19th of April 1923 in Preston and died aged twenty-one lost at sea around the March 16th, 1945, off Sri Lanka (Ceylon) He is remembered in Liveramentu, Colombo, Shi Lanka plot 2B 11.
He was in the Royal Marines aboard HMS Lauka, service number CH/X/107221 when he died. Denis was the son of Thomas and Elizabeth Mary Bentley-Singleton (nee Dawson) of Churchill Cottage, Durton Lane. Thomas died aged 26 in 1925, and Elizabeth remarried Richard Singleton in 1931, however by 1939 Elizabeth had been widowed again.
Private James Mason see Broughton War Memorial
Sources
- Ancestry
- Commonwealth War Graves commission
- Lancashire Parish Clerks online
- British Newspaper Archives
- National Archives
- RAF records of WW2 losses