DRAFT copies of a roll of honour naming almost 4,000 people from Barnsley who died during the First World War has gone on display at the town hall and Barnsley Library.
The large format book will be the best and most complete record of all those from the Barnsley area who were killed or later died of their injuries during the First World War from 1914 to 1918. It features 3,788 names transcribed from more than 600 war memorials including cenotaph-type monuments, panels, plaques and headstones.
But the document now on display is only in draft format, and those behind the project now want the public to go and see it - especially if they have relatives who were killed - and check it for any possible errors or to provide more photographs.
The Barnsley War Memorials Project was set up four years ago to record every war memorial in Barnsley, and to record and research every name to produce a record complete with as many biographical details and photographs as possible.
The hope was that the resulting roll of honour would be ready by the centenary of the end of the war in November 2018.
Despite the project hitting some snags along the way, group member Carole Gude said she is now absolutely confident that will happen.
“I think once we’d set that ambition to have it ready for the centenary of the end of the war, I don’t think there was ever any real doubt it would happen. We’ve always had that focus.
“We’re all really pleased to get to this stage. Obviously it is still a work in progress, it’s not quite what the finished article is going to look like, but to get to this stage is a really huge step forward.
“What we’ve said all the way along is that we want it to be as good and as complete as we can possibly make it. It’s going to be here for a very long time and we want to make a really good job of it.
“That’s why we want to appeal to the public to come and see it, and if they know they’ve got a relative who died, they can come and see it, and check it and make sure the information is right.”
Carole said it was also hoped that some people might have photographs, both of those men currently without photographs, or to replace some of the poorer quality images.
“Some are from newspapers and have been reproduced time and time again so they are now quite poor. We know there were quite a lot of studio photographs taken of men in uniform. Hopefully people do have some of those somewhere.”
The finished roll of honour will be professionally printed and bound and have specially commissioned artwork for the cover and page borders. Design apprentices at Barnsley College are working on the designs for the cover.
Fay Polson, from the group, said: “We’re all really pleased with how it’s come together, it’s been a very long and difficult process.
“Once we had a name, which was often just an initial and a surname, we then had to set about confirming the person’s identity using military records, census returns newspaper articles and other historical documents such as the absent voters’ list, before adding them to the roll of honour.
“It’s been a huge task and I don’t think I ever realised just how many war memorials, and just how many men there were.”
Among the 3,788 names on the roll of honour are 221 names on local war memorials the volunteers have been unable to identify so far.
They have identified 662 war memorials in the Barnsley area, 322 of these are memorial headstones found in cemeteries.
The roll of honour draft can be found both at Barnsley Library, and in the archives centre at Experience Barnsley in the town hall.
