Harry Mead explains how a small moorland village comes to have two exceptional war memorials

YES, two memorials but just one place – Commondale, in the North York Moors. What unites them is not simply their location in the same parish. Each bears the names of two victims of the First World War – Robert Leggott and Alfred Cockerill.

Volunteering together at the start of the war, they were merely lads. It’s believed they were under the official enlisting age of 17-and-a -half, possibly only 16. But they were tall, at least 5ft 11ins, the minimum height for the Grenadier Guards, in which they enlisted.

Within weeks, Cockerill was wounded and severely gassed. Invalided out, he returned home but never regained health, dying in 1920. By then Leggott, too, had perished. Among the dead of the Somme in 1916, his body was never recovered.

The farm lads’ sacrifice was keenly felt in their home village. The war claimed nine local men, whose names, including those of Leggott and Cockerill, appear on the memorial on the small green in the village centre. But when he unveiled the memorial in 1921, the local estate owner, Lord Gisborough, highlighted the pair, albeit anonymously. He said: “I won’t mention any names, but you will know of one gallant lad who walked miles across the moors to tell one of his pals that he must go as his country called him. That is the spirit that has made England great.”

That "gallant lad" was probably Leggott, since it’s unlikely that Cockerill, having died only recently, would be remembered in quite that way. But their joint decision to enlist makes them equal in gallantry. By whoever undertook it, the moorland trek was necessary because Leggott had moved out of the parish with his family – to Round Close Farm, near Guisborough.

Unchanged today, the three miles or so of moorland that one of them crossed remains the haunt of grouse and sheep, with just one lonely farm, North Ings. And in the middle, facing every storm that blows, is a memorial stone to these two lads. Still upright as a Guardsman at attention almost a century after it was erected, it bears the engraved emblem of an exploding hand-grenade, the cap-badge symbol of the Grenadier Guards, and an inscription that declares: "For Remembrance. Guardsmen Robbie Leggott killed in action 1916. Alf Cockerill died of wounds 1920, Duty 1914."

Provided at the instigation of Lord Gisborough’s wife, Margaret, this proud pillar has just gained the distinction it deserves – listing as an historic monument. Some say it marks the spot where the two lads decided to enlist. Others say the lads were shepherds, who met here regularly to sort out their flocks. But in a short account of the memorial in his book Some Reminiscences and Folk Lore of Danby Parish and District, Joseph Ford, of neighbouring Castleton, a contemporary of the lads, described only one of them, unidentified, as a shepherd. It’s possible Lady Gisborough chose the spot as representing the midway point between the lads’ homes. The exact point, between Round Close and Maddy House, Cockerill’s home, would not be quite far enough onto the moor.

Some years ago, veterans of the Northumbria branch of the Grenadier Guards Association made an annual pilgrimage to the memorial. Not wanting to leave anything that might harm the foraging sheep, they simply stood in silent homage for two minutes. And though that tribute has (I believe) ceased, small crosses and poppies are still placed at the stone.

Far less attention is paid to the village war memorial, though this has its own noteworthy story. Indeed, in his Reminiscences, published in 1953, Ford devotes more than three pages to Commondale’s official war memorial, adding just a paragraph on the moorland stone.

The essence of Ford’s piece is that Commondale was determined its war memorial would not be any off-the-shelf catalogue job. As he explains, the village regarded the making of the memorial as “a sacred duty”. To that end it would “ignore the custom of other villages, who often blindly accepted any design suggested to them, using some foreign material out of all keeping with the harmony of the surroundings”.

In contrast, “Commondale people wanted a monument composed of stone from their native hillside, to be designed by a local man and chiselled and erected by a local man”. And so it came about. A discreet panel on the memorial records that it was "designed by WH Earl, Danby, dressed and erected by J Ford, Castleton". Yes, the same Ford telling the story. Farmers led the stone from Wayworth Moor. But not even the best sandstone, nor brass, bronze or lead, was considered enduring enough for the names of the dead.

“Such things were all perishable,” Ford observed. So how could Commondale, resolute that its memorial must be 100 per cent local, ensure survival of the recorded names, as Ford put it, “two thousand or five thousand years hence”?

Providence had provided Commondale with a brickworks, a rare feature in a small moorland village. Its products included good quality earthenware. Ford reveals that an “especially skilled” modeller in clay, Edward Overy, fashioned memorial panels, which were then fired by another “highly-valued” craftsman, John Oxley.

Ford judged their handiwork to be “as imperishable as glass or the flint spears and arrows of our Neolithic ancestors”. Time has proved him correct. The panels today – four in all, one bearing the dedication, two listing the names, and the fourth offering some stirring words, including “their glory shall not be blotted out” – look as good as new.

Sadly the same can’t be said of the moorland memorial, whose inscription is weathering. The ‘6’ can be misread as ‘5’, and ‘1920’ is illegible. Should the eroded dates – and maybe the entire inscription, in time – be re-cut? I would say yes, but Historic England, responsible for the stone’s Grade II listing, would probably disagree.

What no-one will quarrel with are Joseph Ford’s valedictory words on the two memorials: “Commondale did not fail to pay due respect and duty to all its sons of heroic blood who now rest where shot and shell screamed and raged during four terrible years on Europe’s ancient battle-ground.”