100 years ago: War memorials unveiled at Barton and Hutton Magna

WAR memorials were being unveiled thick and fast 100 years ago, and the D&S reported how Sir Henry Havelock-Allan, of Blackwell Grange, and the Archdeacon of Richmond, the Venerable Henry Armstrong Hall, had unveiled two “ambitious” memorials in the village of Barton.

The four bells in the church had been recast and replaced in the tower, and a “grey granite rustic cross” had been built outside the village institute.

The first of 17 names on the cross is that of Captain Thomas Sowerby Rowlandson, of Newton Morrell, who is one of this column’s heroes. He was the goalkeeper for the Corinthians, a travelling team of gentleman footballers who played to the spirit of the rules. He toured the world with them, captained England amateurs and played for Sunderland, Newcastle and Darlington.

When the First World War broke out, Tom, was 34. He immediately gave his large farmhouse to the Red Cross, for use as a hospital, and joined the Yorkshire Regiment in Northallerton as a lieutenant. In Belgium he was promoted to captain, was awarded the Military Cross, and was killed on September 15, 1916, on the Somme, during the Battle of Flers-Courcelette.

It was the battle in which the British unleashed the tank, but Capt Rowlandson died as “he raced his men for the German trenches, having only a walking stick as a weapon,” according to the D&S’ evening sister paper, the Northern Despatch.

The report of the unveiling concludes: “Although £744 has been subscribed to the memorial, there remains a deficit of £186, which it is hoped will shortly be wiped off.”

Three days later, the Venerable Hall was at it again, this time dedicating the Memorial Lychgate at Hutton Magna. This splendid gate cost £800 and was built by Robert “Mouseman” Thompson of Kilburn (although he had started putting his trademark mouse on his creations in 1919, the Hutton Magna gate doesn’t have one).

Hutton Magna lychgate leading to the church Picture: SARAH CALDECOTT

The gate is dedicated to the 12 villagers who, it says, were “men of this parish who at the call of king and country left all that was dear to them, endured hardness, faced danger, and finally passed out of sight of men by the path of duty and self sacrifice, giving up their own lives that others might live as freedom”.

The D&S didn’t report on the unveiling, unfortunately, although it did report on May 14 that the archdeacon had died, at the age of 67, having been unwell for a couple of weeks. Hutton Magna looks to have been his last unveiling.

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