Gaby Rivers, curator of award-winning The Judge’s Lodging museum in Presteigne, has just returned from Belgium where she hoped to bring closure to an important project undertaken over the last year.
The project has involved recording information on all the names on Presteigne’s war memorial, people who lost their lives in the Great War. Working with local history enthusiast George Lancett, they have recently completed information cards for every soldier listed, which anyone can pop in to read whenever the building is open.
Eight of Presteigne’s soldiers were lost in the Flanders Fields and three of those bodies were never found. Gaby managed to get to and photograph all three of the memorial inscriptions at the Menin Gate, Ypres and Tyne Cott Cemetery, in addition to finding two of the graves.
Particularly moving was the discovery of the grave of Richmond E. O. L. Green, one of only three soldiers for which the museum has so far managed to find a photograph.
Richmond was the son of Frederick Lyttleton Green, whose firm of solicitors, F. L. Green and Nixon, was in Broad Street, Presteigne. He was a popular young man and, before the outbreak of war, had been both vice-captain and honorary secretary of Presteigne St Andrew’s Football Club.
Soon after the outbreak of war, Richmond volunteered and was granted a commission as Second Lieutenant in the King’s Shropshire Light Infantry on September 14, 1914. After seeing much action on the Western Front in France and Belgium, he returned home to Presteigne for leave to spend Christmas with his parents and sister in 1915.
Despite being described as ‘not at all fit’, he returned to his duties in early 1916. He died a few weeks later, being shot in the head whilst in charge of a working party clearing barbed wire in preparation for an attack.
His Colonel wrote of him: “Always cheerful and never happier than when on specially dangerous work in ‘No Man’s Land’. He was brave beyond words and the life and soul of his comrades. We are all most proud of him.”
Richmond is buried at the small Essex Farm Cemetery, site of an advanced dressing station right on the front line. It is believed to be the exact location where the Canadian doctor Major John McCrae wrote one of WWI’s greatest poems, 'In Flanders Fields’.
On Remembrance Day this year, The Judge’s Lodging will be paying further homage to local people and their involvement in the Great War. A talk by local historian and author, Catherine Beale, titled ‘One Household at War: Kinsham Court in WWI’, will take place on Wednesday, November 11 at 7pm.
This talk will look more closely at the inhabitants of the house and how the war impacted on their lives, from gentry to gardener, nursery beds to nursing, Hampton Court to Corton. Tickets are £10, to include seasonal refreshments, all served under the huge Christmas tree, which will go up the day before. Just call 01544 260650 to reserve, or drop by the museum.
Poster for the ‘One Household at War’ event.
Panel 49 of the Menin Gate, Ypres, which lists Arthur Saunders
and Henry Taylor of Presteigne, whose bodies never found.
A new monument to the Welsh fallen in Belgium.
Picture captions:
Top: Gaby Rivers at the grave of Richmond Green.
Top: Richmond E. O. L. Green from a newspaper report on his death 1916.
Ends
For more information please contact Gabrielle Rivers, senior museum curator at The Judge’s Lodging, Presteigne Tel: 01544 260650, Email: info@judgeslodging.org.uk
www.judgeslodging.org.uk
No comments:
Post a Comment