War Memorial Name Transcripts – Links, Bibliography, Information Sources
Web Links
| War Memorials: general | |
| Commonwealth War Graves Commission | The basic starting point for researching those killed in WW I onwards.. Their Debt of Honour Register is an on-line searchable database of all the War Graves that they maintain. |
| The Friends of War Memorials | A charity devoted to the preservation of war memorials. Their site has a great deal of war memorial related material, including links to other on-line collections of War Memorial transcripts. |
| The National Inventory of War Memorials | With a handful of office staff and 500 or so field volunteers, they are compiling a listing of all the war memorials in Britain. They estimate there are around 54,000 such memorials; at the last count, about 40,000 memorials had been catalogued, and more are added daily to the database. The basic database of war memorial locations will go on-line in November 2001. They have name listings filed in their archive, but don’t as yet have the resources to enter these on computer. Currently, field volunteers are being canvassed to see if there are sufficient to do data entry, so I’m hopeful about this: projects like FreeBMD show that there’s a vast reserve of volunteer data-entry labour available for genealogy-related projects. |
| Anglo-Boer War Memorials Project | If you’re looking for information on Boer war memorials, then this is the site to visit. There’s a very interesting article on their survey of Boer War Memorials which is well worth reading, and there’s a page of links to listings from Boer War memorials. |
| War Memorials: specific locations | |
| Tombstones and Monumental Inscriptions | Guy Etchell’s collection of photographs & inscriptions; plus a large collection of worldwide links to cemeteries and transcriptions… |
| Gloucestershire genealogy | Stuart Flight’s extensive set of pages has a number of Gloucestershire war memorials – very little overlap with my listings, and much more besides: lots of miscellaneous Gloucestershire historical & genealogical information, and a whole heap of related links; more material is added regularly. |
| GENUKI Gloucestershire | If I haven’t got a Glos. location listed, and it’s not on Stuart Flight’s pages, see if the individual Town/village page on GENUKI has a link… |
| Warwickshire War Memorials | I’ve only got a handful of listings for Warwickshire: this site adds a couple of dozen more. It hasn’t been updated much lately, but memorials are not very prone to change much. The listings include some additional information about the men listed on the memorials. |
| South Oxfordshire War Memorials | Alec Powell’s listings of inscriptions |
| North Oxfordshire memorials | Photographs of a number of memorials from Andy Allanson-Parsons. No listings of names, but the picture quality is pretty good, and the names can easily be read off from the photos. |
| Bedfordshire | Martin Edwards’ listings |
| Buckinghamshire | Buckinghamshire rolls of honour and memorials |
| Cambridgeshire | Martin Edwards’ listings |
| Huntingdonshire | Martin Edwards’ listings |
| Lincolnshire | Lincolnshire rolls of honour and memorials |
| Northamptonshire | Northamptonshire rolls of honour and memorials |
| Regimental memorials: | |
| Royal Gloucester Hussars | Gloucester Hussars Roll of Honour |
| Sherwood Foresters | The Sherwood Foresters Roll of Honour, listing some 11,409 men died in WW I. The link goes to the Western Front Association’s page; follow the link to the East Midlands branch to find this listing |
| Somerset Light Infantry Roll of Honour | Transcribed from the regimental memorial book |
| Other Monumental Inscriptions: | |
| Rod Neep’s Monumental Inscriptions page | This would probably be useful: pointers to general lists of monumental inscriptions |
Printed Sources
Books about War Memorials
Mark Rogers has compiled two books of biographical
data and photographs about men listed on memorials – The Men on the Memorial, about the men of Crowle (Worcestershire), and In Dedication to a Future World, about the ex-pupils of the Royal Grammar School, Worcester.
Copies are available from the author: The Crowle booklet at £3, and the Worcester Grammar School book at £6 (these prices include P.&P.) He can be contacted at:
59 Velsheda Road
Shirley
Solihull,
West Midlands
B90 2JP
My local family history society, the Birmingham & Midland Society for Genealogy & Heraldry, has been recording monumental inscriptions for hundreds of locations in Worcestershire,
Warwickshire and Shropshire. They’re not available online, but you can buy
microfiche copies. See the list of publications on the web page.
Other Printed Sources
These local history books were a useful source of information on the burials of WW II airmen in Pershore Cemetery and
Evesham’s Waterside cemetery:
Four books by Glyn Warren:
RAF Pershore, A History
1982 ISBN 0.907700.05.5
Enthusiasts Publications, Newport PagnellThe Forgotten Heroes – The Air War over Worcestershire and the Clee Hills
1985 ISBN 0.907700.11.X
published by the authorThe Endless Sky – Pershore and Defford
1988 ISBN 0.9513799.0.9
published by the authorWorcestershire at War
1991 ISBN 0 9513799 2 5
published by the author (covers Perdiswell airfield at Worcester, and Honeybourne airfield)
The above books are now, so far as I know, out of print; I had even heard that the actual printing plates of one of these books had been destroyed in a fire at the printers. However, the Worcestershire county library system has a number of copies of these, so if you are in the UK you should be able to borrow them via interlibrary loan. If you have better information on the availability of thse books, (particularly if you actually are Glyn Warren), please contact me
This detailed history of Honeybourne and Long Marston airfields. Note that tHere is now (2002) a new edition of this book:
:
Angry Skies across the Vale by Brian Kedward
1995 ISBN 0 9527002 0 4
Published by the author
This history of Gloucestershire airfields in WW II supplied some background information on various WW II burials:
Wings over Gloucestershire by John Rennison
1988 ISBN 0 9514047 0 9
Picadilly Publishing
Information about two men on memorials in Upton on Severn and Perdiswell Sports centre, Worcester, and a number of other pilots, can be found in this book
Through Peril to the Stars by Dilip Sarkar
1993 ISBN 0 95198321 1 0
Ramrod Publications, 8 Hornyold Avenue, Malvern, Worcs. WR14 1QJ
Gazetteers that helped in finding churches:
The Old Parish Churches of Worcestershire Mike Salter
First published July 1989, now in an expanded version Nov. 1995
ISBN 1 871731 24 0
Folly Publications, Folly Cottage, 151 West Malvern Road, Malvern Worcs. WR14 4AY
100 A5 pages crammed with the locations, photos, drawings and plans of over 170 Worcestershire churches. (first edition was 85 pages)The Country Church Visitors’ Handbook
[Various ISBN – a new edition each year]
Published by: Through the Church Door, The Hay Loft, The Old Vicarage, Stoulton, Worcester WR7 4RE
A 100+ page A5 booklet listing churches in Herefordshire, Worcestershire, South Shropshire & South Warwickshire. It has directions for finding the churches, lists of open days and festivals, and short essays on aspects of church history or architecture (different topics in each year’s edition). An increasing number of churches are locked outside service hours, and this publication is very useful for finding days when they are open..
And, of course, the many leaflets and small booklets available in the various
churches, describing the history and features of the church, enabling me to
find a couple of memorials that I would otherwise have missed.
Last modified 14 July 2003