New light is shed on town’s fallen
Search on for relatives of Queen’s Own Yorkshire Dragoons remembered on newly-restored war memorial
It brings it home to people today what people went through. Doncaster and District Heritage Association chairman John Adams.
THEIR NAMES were etched into the limestone monument, so in the generations to come, a town could remember their sacrifice.
But almost 100 years after the war memorial to members of the Queen’s Own Yorkshire Dragoons at Doncaster Minster was first dedicated, those names were allbut lost under dirt and erosion.
Now the 45 men can be celebrated once again after painstaking conservation work as part of a lottery-funded project that has not only restored the monument, but shed new light on the regiment and the personal stories of the men from Doncaster, and further beyond in Yorkshire, who served in it.
Doncaster and District Heritage Association (DDHA) were awarded almost £10,000 for the project, and now the work on the memorial is complete, hopes to track down surviving family members of the men recognised on it ahead of a re-dedication ceremony next year.
DDHA chairman John Adams said it took more than a month to complete the restoration.
“The results can only be described as stunning,” he said. “Before, you could barely read the names. Now they have been engraved into the stone and painted so everyone can see them. It has ensured that the current generation, and generations to come, can recognise the sacrifice they made.”
The Queen’s Own Yorkshire Dragoons were made up of men from Doncaster and all over South and West Yorkshire, with headquarters in Sheffield, Wakefield and Huddersfield as well as the main headquarters a quarter of a mile from the Minster at Nether Hall.
Mr Adams added: “When the memorial was restored, we noticed it makes mention of the war being from 1914 to 1919, which raised a few eyebrows, but members of the Yorkshire Dragoons were in Cologne after 1918. In fact, three of those on the memorial died as part of that in an influenza epidemic. They survived the war only to die from the flu.”
Alongside the conservation work has been an in-depth project by Mr Adams’ wife, and member of the DDHA, Sue Adams, to piece together biographies for each of the Dragoon members who died in the First World War.
“It is not the first time Sue has done this; she’d already done biographies of 112 men of the parish listed on another memorial in the Minster,” Mr Adams said. “She now refers to them as ‘her men’ as she has delved into their family histories.
“It brings it home to people today what people went through in the First World War. There had never been anything like it.”
Through her research, Mrs Adams was able to rediscover long-forgotten relics relating to the men that had been out of public view for decades at Doncaster Museum.
A regimental Guidon, that had been originally laid up at the Minster in 1959, and a campaign chest belonging to Captain L P Clay, a Halifax-born, Etoneducated member who was killed in action in 1917. His name is the first on the memorial.
“The chest contained his full dress uniform, and looking at it, he must have been a very small, slightly built man, with less than a 30-inch waist,” Mr Adams said. “We are still to find out why and how his uniform ended up deposited in Doncaster.”
Anyone with a family connection to the Dragoons can contact Mr Adams on 01302 868774 or email johnadam1@ talktalk.net.