Next time we're walking down to Oakwell, I'll give a thought to this lad who lived at 16 Oakwell Lane. A pork butcher's assistant in 1911, joined the ranks, won the MIlitary Medal and rose to the rank of Lieutenant . I think his house may have been where the new properties are on the left going down.
The railway went over Oakwell Lane and carried on then when it stopped and the embankment landscaped the houses where built there
My friend Fay Polson wrote this about 1 area of Barnsley in Worsbrough Common which brings home to me anyhow how bad the war was I prepared this map for a presentation I did during the Centenary. It shows the locations of the homes of the 58 men killed from just one parish of Barnsley - St John's in the Barebones area - during the Battle of the Somme. Remember that the Battle lasted 141 days, the perspex memorial with soldiers' pictures, now in Churchfields Gardens in town, shows the 300 men from Barnsley who lost their lives on the First Day alone! St John's parish war memorial names 140 men associated with the area who lost their lives in the war - but during our research we discovered many more who were not included - maybe because they belonged to other churches, or had no-one to put their names forward for the memorial. In this snapshot of time you can see that out of 58 local fatalities during the period at least 13 names don't appear on the memorial that maybe should have done. For another 15 named on the memorial I didn't have enough information to accurately place the spots. For the full list of names go to the webpage for the memorial, www.barnsleywarmemorials.org.uk/2013/12/st-johns-church-barnsley-oak-memorial.html
