Bishop reopens mother’s tree tribute to heros of Great War
A WOODLAND walk in the North York Moors created by a grieving mother to remind her of the son she lost in the First World War was reopened at the weekend by the Bishop of Whitby.
The newly named Goathland Centenary Walk, along the path of an old railway line, was sown in the 1920s with 12 English oak trees by Kate Smailes, who lived nearby and liked to take a daily walk there.
She planted the first in memory of her son George, a second lieutenant in the West Yorkshires who died at the Somme. She then put down 11 more – one for each of the other Goathlanders who never came back.
The trees still stand – they are now 50ft tall – but their original purpose had been lost to time, until members of a community group, acting on information from a resident in his 90s, began to research their history.
A path between them has now been cleared and each one marked with a steel plaque of a First World War soldier in the familiar pose of the “respectful Tommy”, pack on back, leaning on the butt of his rifle. Each bears the name of one of the 12.
Their consecration on Saturday was attended by Mrs Smailes’ relative, Sheila Benzie, 95, who said her ancestor had planted the oaks in 1922, but had died soon afterwards. Her husband later remarried.
“There was one old chap in the village who remembered why the trees were there,” said Keith Thompson, chairman of the Goathland Community Hub and Sports Pavilion.
“If our secretary hadn’t spoken to him three years ago, the story would have been lost to posterity.”
About six million men were mobilised in the First World War and just over 700,000 were killed.
Goathland lost a significant proportion of its young men – from a village of perhaps 500 people, or 250 men and boys, 12 never returned. They are remembered at Goathland’s war memorial and in St Mary’s Church, which also houses a memorial to the fallen.