Frederick James William Bichard (650625) was one of two brothers killed during the war. His family lived in Oulton after being evacuated from Guernsey. Freddie, as he was known, was a sergeant in the Royal Air Force 49 Squadron. He was a wireless operator and air gunner and died on the 28th of October 1940 at half past midnight. His aircraft was airborne over the North Sea heading for Hamburg after departing from Scampton airfield north of Lincoln. It was attacked by a German fighter and crashed into the sea off Skegness. Two pilots and another sergeant were also killed. Sergeant Bichard’s body was brought to Oulton and buried in St. John’s churchyard. A memorial is housed inside the Skegness lifeboat station. Freddie was born in Southampton in 1917 but grew up on the island of Guernsey. His father, Henry, was a fisherman and his mother was the daughter of a quarry worker. The Bichards were amongst a number of Channel Islands families who were evacuated in 1940 and allocated houses by the Rothwell Urban District Council. The Bichards lived at 65 North Lane in Oulton and after arriving with practically nothing the local community rallied round to provide practical support. They made friends with Water Haigh overman Fred Teet and his wife Miranda from 12 North Lane who donated clothes and shoes from their own children. After the war the Bichards and two surviving children returned to Guernsey. They were immensely grateful for the support they received during those difficult times and they kept in touch with Oulton friends for many years after their return home.
Clifford Henry Bichard (T/5341737) was a lance corporal in the Royal Army Service Corps. He died on 16 May 1943 at Carlisle and was buried with his brother (see above) at Oulton. He was born in 1918 in Guernsey and came with his family to Oulton in 1940. In 1941 he married Vera Beatrice Lewis, the daughter of a welder and wireman who had also been evacuated from Guernsey. A son, Alan David Bichard, was born in early 1943 just a few months before his father’s death.
Frank Inman Bartliff(e) was a bricklayer living at 3 Oakdene Yard in Woodlesford. He joined the 5th Battalion of the East Yorkshire Regiment (Duke of York’s Own) which was formed in 1939. After fighting in Tunisia and Sicily it took part in the first wave of D-Day landings on Gold Beach in Normandy on 6 June 1944 and then fought its way through France and Belgium and north into Holland. Frank was a lance corporal and was 33 years old when he was killed on the night of 1/2 October 1944 a few days after the end of the Battle of Arnhem. He was buried at the Arnhem War Cemetery at Oosterbeek. Frank Bartliff was born in Woodlesford on 23 August 1911 although his parents, Robert William Bartliff and Rose Inman didn’t get married at Woodlesford church until a month after his birth. Her father was miner Squire Inman who had been born at Astley near Swillington. Robert William and Rose lived with her parents at Alma Yard off Alma Street and in 1913 Frank was joined by a sister, Alice Mary. Sadly their father died in July 1915 just three weeks before his second son, William Squire Bartliff, was born on 3 August 1915. The Bartliff family originated in North Yorkshire around Malton and Pickering. Frank’s great grandfather, Dale Bartliff, became an auctioneer and valuer and lived at Kirkby Moorside. Frank’s grandfather, William Bartliff, was born at Scarborough and was also in Kirkby Moorside in 1891 with a young family and working as a butcher. By 1901, however, he had moved to Woodlesford and was employed as a maltster at Bentley’s brewery whilst lodging on Church Street with Charles Nicholson, a brewery drayman. The rest of his family were living in York where Robert William was a groom for York Corporation so they must have moved to Woodlesford when William found a house for them to live in. Robert William also became a maltster at the brewery. By 1911 the family were living in one of the large brewery owned terraced houses on Eshald Lane and William had become the foreman maltster. In 1930 at St. Oswald’s church in Methley Frank Inman Bartliff married Violet Limbert, the daughter of Edwin Limbert, a Methley miner. They moved to Oakdene Yard in 1934 and their son Malcolm was born in 1938. In the 1950s Violet and Malcolm lived on All Saints Drive in Woodlesford.
Ralph Austin Brown (4544935). Died 25 September 1944. Age 31. Parents: Charles Brown and Donna Teresa Brown nee Westmoreland, of Woodlesford. Husband of Winifred Mary Brown, of Woodlesford. Corporal in 2nd Battalion Monmouthshire Regiment.
Fred Cockerham The only Fred Cockerham in the records is reported to have been taken prisoner in the Middle East in October 1942 but his precise date of death isn’t known. He was serving as a private with the 4th Battalion of the Green Howards (Alexandra, Princess of Wales’ Own Yorkshire Regiment). Service number 4396007. It’s not clear where he lived in Oulton and Woodlesford nor how old he was. A record card indicates he was reported missing but it wasn’t until 22 March 1944 that it was presumed he had died whilst a prisoner of war in Italian hands.
Ronald Coombs (7906433) was born in Woodlesford in the summer of 1919. He was 23 years old when he was killed in action in Tunisia on 22 April 1943 whilst serving with the 51st Leeds Rifles which was part of the Royal Tank Regiment. He was buried at the Massicault War Cemetery near Tunis. Ronald’s parents were Thomas Coombs and Sarah Ann (nee Tooley). Thomas was born in 1892 in Leeds. He moved to Woodlesford to work as a labourer at a local colliery, probably Water Haigh, and later became a pipe fitter underground. In 1910 at Woodlesford church, he married Sarah Ann, the daughter of joiner Eli Tooley and his wife Adeline (nee Haigh). Ronald’s and Sarah Ann’s first son Leonard was born in 1911 and for a while they lodged with William Lawson Jenkins at 9 Roberts Street in New Woodlesford. Later they moved into 7 Roberts Street and their other children included May born in 1914 and Horace born in 1915. Adeline Tooley gave birth to 14 children, 10 of whom survived into adulthood. In 1911 Eli and Sarah Ann along with six sons, Alfred, Sydney, Eli, Albert, George, and James, lived at 11 Roberts Street. Probably whilst on leave from the army Ronald Coombs married Sylvia Sampson in the autumn of 1941.
William Gaunt
Harold Forrest (14719415) served with the 1st Battalion, West Yorkshire Regiment. He was 33 years old when he was killed in action in Burma on 10 April 1945, probably in fighting near the Japanese base at Meiktila.
Harold was born in Oulton in 1911. His parents were Edwin Waite Forrest and Hadassah Britton who had married at St. John’s church in 1905 when they were both 22 years old. A daughter, Lillie, was born in 1907 but she died when she was an infant. In 1911 they were living at a cottage known as The Hollins off Wakefield Road. Edwin worked as a labourer at a chemical manufacturer but late became a miner operating a coal cutting machine, probably at Water Haigh colliery. Hadassah Forrest died in 1920 and was buried at Oulton. Edwin remarried in 1923 to Alice Huddlestone and they had a daughter called Joan in 1924 but she died at the age of 9 in 1934. Another child, Eric was born in 1927 but died less than a year later. Ronald Forrest was born in 1929.
Before he joined the army Harold Forrest was a general labourer at Armitage’s brickworks in Woodlesford and lived with his father, stepmother and Ronald at The Nookin.
Geoffrey Gunning was a merchant seaman who is not on the Oulton memorial. He was born in 1922 and died on 2 January 1942. Service number R195496. His widowed mother, Mabel Gunning nee Harrop, lived at The Poplars on Holmsley Lane with her daughter Mabel G Gunning, born in 1915. Geoffrey was the second radio officer on the Steam Ship Waziristan, a British Cargo Steamer of 5,135 tons built in 1924. On the 2nd January 1942 when on route from New York for Murmansk carrying a general cargo in Convoy Pq 7A she became stranded in ice and was damaged by Lufwaffe bombing and then torpedoed by German submarine U-134 and sunk when 20nm South of Bear Island, Norway. Crew 47 lost. Geoffrey Gunning’s name is recorded on the Tower Hill Memorial in London. His father, John Daniel Gunning, had worked in the soap industry as an advertising executive and died in Leeds in 1935.
John Haigh (2664152 )was killed in action in Italy on 23 July 1944. He was serving in the 3rd Battalion of the Coldstream Guards. Born in the Barnsley district in 1915, before the war he was a fitter and erector with an engineering company and lived with his parents and 6 brothers and sisters at 30 Green Lea in one of the houses built after the First World War that have now been demolished.
John was the eldest son of Norris Haigh, a miner who had been born in 1878 and baptised at St Michael’s church in Emley. He moved to Woodlesford and married Rothwell born Nellie Higgins at Woodlesford church in 1914. Her parents were stone mason Tom Higgins and Polly, nee Ambler.
Jack Hartley was a Leading Aircraftman, Service number 999072, Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve. He was killed on 17 November 1941 when a single engine training plane crashed near Albany in Georgia in the United States. A colleague, Robert Wilson from Newcastle also died. They were on an instrument training flight when their plane, an AT 6A Texan, stalled and crashed about 5 miles north east of its base at Turner Field. Hartley had volunteered for service shortly after the outbreak of war and was called up in August 1940. In June 1941 he was sent to Canada as part of a pilot training scheme and had moved to Turner Field not long before he died. He has a small gravestone at the Crown Hill Cemetery at Albany in Dougherty County, Georgia, near a much larger memorial stone to RAF servicemen erected after the war by local people. Jack was born in Leeds in 1917 and grew up initially at Burton Grove in Hunslet. The family had a long standing connection to Woodlesford though as Jack’s father, William Hartley, born in 1889, had been a miner at Water Haigh colliery since at least 1921. Jack’s grandfather, Johnson Hartley, was born in Rothwell. Jack’s mother, Edith, was from Leeds and was the daughter of a painter and decorator. She worked as a gas mantle sorter before getting married. Jack had a brother, Edgar Hartley, born in 1916. The family had moved to 66 Back Eshald Place in the 1920s. Shortly after news of his son’s death Bill Hartley told a Yorkshire Evening Post reporter that Jack was expected home shortly, following the completion of his course America. “In fact,” said Mr. Hartley, “we only received last week the following cablegram from Jack: ‘Everything O.K. for last lap. Love.'” Jack was a former choirboy at Woodlesford church and went to Woodlesford school and the City of Leeds secondary school. Before enlisting Jack had worked as an assistant clerk in the showroom of W. and T. Avery Ltd., weighing machine and scale manufacturers at Wellington Street in Leeds. Edgar Hartley served as a corporal in the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry.
Charles Herbert Hobkinson (1726219) was born in April 1908 in Woodlesford and spent his early years in a house close to the Pottery Lane railway bridge. His parents were Charles Henry Hobkinson and Ada, nee Langfield. In December 1936 Charles Herbert married Doris Waterhouse from Leeds and just before the war he was working as a bus conductor and living in Castleford. Doris appears to have had two children by then.
Charles Herbert was serving as a gunner in the 65th Heavy Anti Aircraft Regiment and the records indicate he died at Pontefract on 28 July 1944. The 65th H.A.A. was a Manchester based regiment of the Territorial Army and had served abroad in the Far East. It’s possible that there is a mistake in the records as it’s more likely that a Yorkshire man would be serving with 66th H.A.A. which was derived from the Leeds Rifles, a volunteer force dating back to the 19th century. In 1944 the majority of the Leeds men were serving in Burma. Charles Herbert’s younger sister, Elsie, worked at Woodlesford school.
David John Hodgson lived with his parents before the war at 1 Cross Avenue on the John o’Gaunts estate. He worked at the Yorkshire Copper Works as a tube cleaner, as did his father who was a general labourer. David John Hodgson (2617379 ) joined the 6th Battalion of the Grenadier Guards and is believed to have died on 22 September 1943 in Italy. Along with 1,745 other Commonwealth casualties his is buried in the Salerno War Cemetery. The Hodgsons don’t appear to have any direct connection to the local area until they moved to live on Church Street in Woodlesford in about 1921. Later they lived at 16 Farrer Lane in Oulton. Both of David’s parents, Jabez and Edith, nee Martin, were born near Cuckfied in Sussex where they married in 1915. They then appear to have moved to live near Epsom in Surrey where their only son was born in January 1919 before they moved to Yorkshire. Jabez’s father, a gardener, came from Hogsthorpe near Skegness so it’s possible they may have had relatives who moved to the Rothwell area from there. Early in 1942 David John Hodgson married 20 year old Rosina J Moger in Epsom. She wad the older sister of William Charles Moger of the Royal Hampshire Regiment who was also killed in the fighting at Salerno two weeks before David. Both men are commemorated on a memorial at St Martin’s in Epsom. The headstone for David John reads: “Always in my thoughts. Your loving Father”. Rosina remarried in 1944 a man called Albert Slade but the electoral registers for Surrey suggest her second husband may also have died during the war.
Harry Hudson (1439209) was serving as a leading aircraftman with the Royal Air Force when he died on 31 May 1943. He was only 20 years old. He appears to have been a member of the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve and died when the plane he was on board crashed. The records don’t indicate where that was, but it was most likely somewhere in the UK. He was buried at Oulton on 4 June 1943.
Harry was born in the Kendal registration district between April and June 1923. His father, George Hudson, born in 1897, was a policeman who had grown up on a farm at Long Green Head near Troutbeck not far from Windermere. In 1920 he married Edith Mary Brangham, the daughter of a railway clerk from Ardwick to the south of Manchester. As well as Harry they had two other children, John born in 1921 and Lilian in 1924. From about 1924 George Hudson was on the beat for the West Riding Constabulary at Barnoldswick in the Skipton Division of the force. There he played a prominent part in organising the annual whist drive and dance in aid of police and local charities, acting as secretary on several occasions. He was also a keen ambulance man and won prizes in police bowls tournaments. In October 1937 George was transferred to Oulton which was then in the Tadcaster Division of the force and newspaper reports in the Wakefield Express indicate he continued with his sports and social activities as well as lifting the collars of local ne’er-do-wells.
In 1939 the Hudsons lived at 62 North Lane in Oulton. John was working as a junior clerk whilst Lilian was an apprentice in a tailoring factory in Leeds. It’s not known what occupation Harry had before he joined the RAF. After the war George and Edith continued to live at the same address.
Jim Murray Records suggest that this was private James Murray (4346342) who was serving with the infantry in the Middle East when he died on 17 August 1942. This is most likely the James Murray who was born in Woodlesford on 20 March 2017. His father was also called James. He was a miner and had married Zara Baxter at Oulton St. John’s church in 1900. They lived originally on Church Street then at 8 French Street in New Woodlesford and by 1911 had three daughters, Hilda, Maud and Florence. By 1921 the family had moved to 1 Powell Street and James was employed by the Henry Briggs company at Savile pit in Methley. Hilda and Maud worked at Armitage’s brickworks off Eshald Lane in Woodlesford in heavy manual jobs they had probably started on during the First World War. As well as young Jim there was another sister called Minnie born in 1911. Before he joined the army Jim was still living with his parents and employed as a mason at Armitage’s stone quarry just a few yards from his home. Maud worked as an inspector of naval ordnance.
Harry Moore (946515) was a lance sergeant in the 81st Anti-Tank Regiment, Royal Artillerry, when he died in Italy on 26 January 1944. This was just four days into the Battle of Anzio which started with an Allied amphibious landing of 50,000 troops known as Operation Shingle. It was opposed by German and Italian forces. Eventually after many thousands of American and British casualties the battle ended on 4 June 1944 with the liberation of Rome. Harry was born in October 1918 and came frrom one of Oulton’s oldest families which can be traced locally to the reign of Henry VIII in the early 1500s. Harry’s father, William, born in 1879, was the son of a farmer. He married Alice Carr from Mickletown in 1902. When the first two of their five children were born he was either a carter or a quarryman and in total they had five – William, Hector, Winifred, Eric and finally Harry. In 1911 the family were living at 14 Church Street in Woodlesford in a house called The Poplars. William appeared to be doing well and declaried he was living on prIvate means, suggesting he may have owNed and rented out property locally. If this was the case something then went badly wrong during the First World War becasue by 1921 he was employed as a surface labourerer at Water Haigh colliery. Hector sorted coal on the pit top screens. It’s not known when William died but by 1939 Alice was living in a council house at 73 North Lane. With her was Eric who was a colliery surface labourer and Harry who was a labourer at a chemical works. He’s buried in the Anzio war cemetery.
Harry Parkinson died on the Lancastria in 1940. See separate page.
Alvah Preston (6855010) was 23 years old when he died in Greece on 11 December 1944 from wounds he had received. He was buried at the Phaleron War Cemetery in Athens. He was a rifleman serving with the motorised 11th Battalion (Queen’s Westminsters) of the King’s Royal Rifle Corps (previously known as the 1st Battalion, The Queen’s Westminsters). The Westminsters had been taking part in fighting to put down a Communist uprising which had started on 3 December 1944 during a demonstration of 200,000 people who marched through the streets of Athens. Known as “The December Events” the fighting lasted for 37 days. Before being sent to Greece the 11th Westminsters had fought against Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps at El Alamein in 1942. They then took part in the Tunisian Campaign before being sent to Sicily and the Italian mainland in 1943. Alvah Preston was born in 1921. His parents were Wilfred and Minnie (nee Baxter) who lived at 9 Airedale View near the Co-op in Woodlesford. Wilfred was born at Methley in 1893 and by 1939 was a “wagon lowerer” at Water Haigh colliery. Alvah had two sisters, Nellie born in 1916 and Edith May in 1930. His uncle, Edwin Hutchinson Baxter, a miner, was living with the Preston’s in 1939. His mother’s father, Jeremiah Baxter, was a miner, born at Idle near Bradford. Jeremiah married mason’s daughter Elizabeth Hutchinson from Woodlesford and moved to the area in the 1880s living at Temperance Terrace off Midland Street before moving to 9 Airedale View sometime before 1911. Living next door to Alvah Preston’s family in 1939, at 7 Airedale View, were his uncle and aunt William and Victoria Preston and their family. Alvah’s grandfather, miner Samuel Preston, was born at Oldbury in Worcestershire.
Anthony Notton
Leonard Maundrill (316308) was an able seaman in the Royal Navy. He died, along with five other sailors, when they were “lost overboard” on 10 October 1942 in an incident on or near his ship HMS Partridge. From August 1942, after being repaired on Tyneside it had been escorting convoys to Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone in West Africa. The date of the incident suggests the ship was on its way back to the UK for maintenance and repair on the River Clyde in Glasgow. Details of what happened are in a report kept in the National Archives at Kew in London which was only made public in 2017. Leonard’s death was a second tragedy for his mother, Mary Emily, nee Britton, who had lost her husband in a mining accident at Water Haigh colliery in 1933. John William Maundrill was one of three men who died after an explosion when gas in rock ignited whilst a team of “rippers” was shotfiring as they advanced the seam. Their graves are side by side in Oulton graveyard. Leonard was born in April 1923. It’s not known where he worked before joining the navy but he lived with his mother and brother at 25a Quarry Hill. The house has been demolished but stood opposite what is now the Oulton Medical Centre. Leonard’s mother earned a living as a Hoffman presser in a clothing factory whilst his brother, Leslie Vincent Maundrill, born in 1926, was still at school in 1939. After the war he married and lived on Churchfield Lane in Rothwell and is believed to have worked at Fanny Pit. The Maundrill family originated at Timsbury in Somerset where they were coal miners. It was Leonard’s great great grandfather, James Maundrill, who brought his family to Yorkshire in the 1860s. He settled in Oulton and would have worked at a local colliery, possibly on the Lowther estate, Rothwell or Newmarket. One of his sons, Leonard’s great grandfather, Charles, was also a miner before he became a gamekeeper in Oulton most likely on the Calverley estate. Meanwhile Leonard’s grandfather, Oliver, born in 1875, was a mine worker in his youth before he moved to Goole in about 1897 to become a coal trimmer on ships at Goole docks. John William Maundrill was born at Goole in 1900 but must have moved back to Oulton at some during or just after the First World War. As well as being remembered on the Oulton with Woodlesford war memorial Leonard Maundrill is commemorated on the Chatham Naval Memorial in Kent.
Dorothy Sidebottom joined the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force whose members were known as WAAFs. Her service number was 2057983. She became an aircraftwoman 2nd class under Bomber Command and was based at Riccall near York. Dorothy’s parents were Harry Sidebottom, colliery clerk, and Violet Sidebottom, nee Fielding. They lived on Holmsley Lane. Dorothy died on her honeymoon following a stroke at the Caledonian Hotel in Edinburgh just two days after her marriage in August 1944. She was 21 years old. Her husband was John Allen Poling, a Canadian air gunner who’d been injured in a training flight on board Halifax bomber which crashed at Marston Moor in March 1944.
Eric Thorp (2661967 ) was 29 years old when he was killed in action on 19 October 1943 near Salerno in Italy. He is buried in the Minturno War Cemetery north of Naples. He was serving as a lance corporal with the 3rd Battalion of the Coldstream Guards. It was part of the 201st Guards Brigade which landed at a bridgehead on the 10th of September 1943. At first the battalion was involved in heavy and confused fighting lasting four days until it established itself on the line of a canal four miles inland. Eric was born in Woodlesford on 2 June 1914. His father was William Henry Thorp, known as Harry, who was born in Leeds in 1872. He married Fanny Hutchinson, the daughter of a blacksmith from Hunslet and they had two children, Hilda and Laura, both born in Leeds before the family moved to lived on Church Street in Woodlesford in about 1907. Harry worked as a drayman for Bentley’s brewery and a third child, Arthur, was born in 1908, followed by William in 1912, Eric in 1914 and George in 1916. Harry had stopped driving to become a maltster before he died in 1930 and was buried at Oulton. In 1939 Fanny moved to a new council house at 71 Green Lea where she was recorded in September that year living with William, a farm labourer, George a brick burner at Armitage’s brickworks, and Eric who had followed his father to become a drayman at the brewery. Also living there was Eric’s wife Doris, nee Burton, and their daughter Irene M Thorp who was born just after the war started. Also living at 56 Green Lea was Arthur Thorp and his young family. He worked as a railwayman and had married Winifred Nicholson in 1930.
James Arthur Tooley (1480698) died on 11 April 1944. He was 32 years old and a sergeant in the RAF. He was a wireless operator in 101 Squadron, part of Bomber Command, based at Ludford Magna in Lincolnshire. He was one of crew of a Lancaster bomber which was shot down by a night fighter at Vignacourt when they were returning from a raid on the Aulnoye railway yards. Four other members of the crew survived and evaded capture. He is buried at St Pierre Cemetery, Amiens, France.
Born in 1912 he grew up on Powell Street in New Woodlesford. In the 1939 Register he was living with his father William, a coal miner, mother Harriet and sister Bessie at 5 Kitchener Street. He was a cutter in tailoring.
Bob Williams
Frank Wilson