LOCAL historians have been nominated for a Love Where You Live award after honouring Darfield’s war heroes.

Local history group members Kay Valentine and Mike Smith painstakingly researched each and every name on Darfield’s war memorials to honour the war dead who came from the village.

The book they produced, Darfield Remembers, sold out at the launch event in October last year and has since seen more than 250 copies printed and sold.

Mike began the project in 2011 by trying to discover more about the stories behind the village’s long-forgotten names. Mike was joined by Kay, who felt that the book deserved to be written, however, neither of them realised initially that years of intensive research would be required to produce the 198 page book.

Kay, 63, said: “When we did the book we felt we just had to do it. “It’s not so much an interest in the First World War as a need to honour those soldiers.

"I go every year to the remembrance service and it has always held some significance as my great uncle is on the Darfield memorial. But now when I go I have a vision of each and every one of them and picture of them in my head.

“You know so much about their lives - which weren’t that great before they went to war - and you get a totally different perspective on it. “Whenever you see the war memorial now it’s different. They’re people to me.

“Just like if it happened today they wouldn’t just be names to us.”

Kay and Mike have made copies of the book available to local schools, libraries and Barnsley Archives, so that their hard work can be preserved for generations to come.

As many records were destroyed in the blitz and a number of men listed on the memorials came to the village to work in the pits, researching the history of the men was particularly difficult.

Kay says she is still disappointed they were unable to pin down two of the soldiers to an exact name, after finding four to six possibilities for each.

Although researching each man was challenging, all 138 names receive an entry in the book, which was published thanks to a grant from Darfield Ward Alliance.

All of the proceeds of the book have been ploughed back into Darfield History Group, which both Mike and Kay are members of, in order to fund future publications and support research.

Kay also visits schools and talks to children to ensure that the memory and stories of local heroes aren’t forgotten.

She said: “When I was doing the research it became something of a vocation. “It’s so interesting from a social history point of view. Writing the book wasn’t that easy really, so it is lovely that people think it was worth while. You don’t do it for the recognition, you do it because it has to be done and the names of these men need to be remembered by future generations.”