Barnsley & District War Memorials

A volunteer-led project (the Barnsley War Memorials Project) worked during the centenary of the First World War (FWW) – 2014 to 2018.

The project collected photographs of the war memorials in the Barnsley borough, and researched the names of the men (and women) listed upon them. This was with the aim of producing a Roll of Honour for the borough of the men who lost their lives in the war. This was achieved in November 2018 and copies distributed to all the branch libraries in the borough, plus a special presentation copy to the Town Hall. The Roll of Honour is also available online.

The project was wound up in 2019 but two of the volunteers, myself and PS, wanted to continue the research and offered to maintain the website, with a new name (Barnsley & District War Memorials), administer a Facebook group and generally be open to anyone who wanted to know about where and how our FWW servicemen and women remembered. The Facebook page has over 1k members, and is still growing.

We have had posts with photographs of men, of gravestones and of ephemera such as medals and small commemorative items. Some members are experts in their FWW related fields – a battlefield guide, a researcher into faith in the war, a collector of badges, family historians, military historians, and lots and lots of people with questions and information about their Barnsley FWW ancestors.

We encourage people to share anything to do with the FWW, but our specialist subject is commemoration and remembrance – which we hope to do by never forgetting our FWW ancestors.