Burton Agnes
On leaving the seaside resort of Bridlington, our next stop
was Burton Agnes. As well as the
Jacobean Hall and Norman Manor House, the village is home to a C12th church and
a war memorial perched high above the main A166 in a prominent position, away
from both the hall and the church.
It was unusual in the fact that an addition had been made of
a soldier killed in Bosnia in the 1990s.
Ganton on the Wold
Here we stopped at a church set back from the main
road. It was one of those moments which
draws your breath away. The church was
highly decorated in the style of a
Catholic Church. However I was sure it
was an Anglican one. If the paintings
were from the Middle Ages, then they were in a remarkable state of repair. A helpful leaflet explained that it was a
`Sykes Church’, one of many in the area restored by two generations of Sir
Tatton Sykes during the C19th. The
colourful murals depict Bible scenes and the floors were ornately tiled.
Wetwang
A place we have stopped before on the journey back from
Bridlington. The war memorial stands in
the churchyard of St. Nicholas, commemorating the handful of men who made the
ultimate sacrifice in both wars.
It was
becoming clear that there would be a series of churches all open, all with some
Sykes family restoration and all with some reference to war. As the day was drawing in, it became a race
against time to get to see as many as possible before daylight ended.
Fridaythorpe
Along the A166 to the village of Fridaythorpe, and the rather
squat church with an Edwardian French style clockface bearing the message, `Time
is short, Eternity is long.’
How true
that message was to become for the five men of the village commemorated on the
war memorial inside the church.
Unfortunately it is in need of a little bit of restoration as the names
are becoming faded. It is to be hoped
that this act is done swiftly.
Fimber
The drive to Fimber was along a very narrow country lane
with spectacular views across the rolling chalky Yorkshire Wolds, a landscape
which reminded me of the Somme. Later
reading has revealed that large numbers of men were actually sent to the area
in 1916 for specific preparation for the Somme offensive due to the similarity.
There was a memorial in the churchyard, but oddly there was no writing on it at
all; no commemoration, no names, nothing. An explanation of this was found at the next
stop at Thixendale.
We entered the church and found a wooden three-panelled
memorial for both those who died and those who also served in the Great War. The central panel depicted St. George. The message beneath the names of the dead
exhort us all to lead rich, fulfilled, worthy lives:
Sons of this place let this of you be saidThat you who live are worthy of the DeadThey gave their lives that you who live may reap
A richer harvest ere you fall asleep
A richer harvest ere you fall asleep
What struck me here was there were twenty-one survivors of
the war, including four Appleyards, two Freers, two Hodgsons, two Megginsons,
two Shepherdsons and two Youngs. What
therefore were the chances of the only two casualties both being Scholes? Cyril died at home and is buried in the
churchyard, whilst George has no known grave and is commemorated on the
Thiepval Memorial on the Somme. The other aspect that struck me was the choice of St. George in commemoration, from a war which had been very much a British and Empire endeavour. This confirms the English confusion between English and British which continued into World War Two.
Thixendale
The road to Thixendale was down a very narrow road in a deep
valley. From high above, we were being watched!
The village itself comprised a handful of houses and a shop
that took us back to the 1950s. We purchased a booklet about the area in the two World Wars and two chocolate bars. The
memorial in the churchyard was identical to the blank one at Fimber, apart from
two bronze plaques, one of which commemorated the work of Tatton Sykes in
restoring the church, and the other which had been added after the war with the
names of the dead. Therefore the
memorial at Fimber was not a war one, but one to Tatton Sykes, but with no
plaque to signify the fact.
There were two men commemorated at Thixendale, one killed on
the Somme and the other, Robert Thornton who was `Killed by accident while
prisoner of war September 4th 1918.’
A search of the National Archives website reveals the shocking
information that a Robert Thornton is found in a file of letters from the
Foreign Office to the German government on alleged suicides and a list of
German military officials accused of war crimes. Clearly there was something amiss about his
death, and something which I shall endeavour to find out more about.
The memorial in the church was of the same design depicting St George as on the Fimber memorial. Again, the Anglicisation of what was a British and Empire crusade is noteworthy.
Bishop Wilton
Our final stop before the light gave out took us to Bishop
Wilton, a place where we had both made a `flying visit’ in previous years; flying, that is, up to the halfway point of
the Snake Lane 10 mile road race which starts and finishes in Pocklington. The war memorial inside the church was one of
rich significance, containing as it did not only the words from John xxx
`Greater love hath no man than this’, but also the striking top piece, `For
God, King and Empire’, emphasising the idea of religious nationalism so
prevelant in that era. There were also
the words, `Make them to be numbered with thy saints, O Lord, in glory everlasting’
from the Book of Common Prayer and the Latin phrase, `Per Crucem ad Lucem’,
meaning `through the cross to the light.’
Therefore reference to the Bible, to Latin phraseology and
to religious nationalism are combined with the High Anglican symbolism of the
martyred Christ on the cross.
However this was not the only gem to reward us for this
final visit. Next to the memorial was a
flag donated to the church by Viscount Halifax in 1951. Edward Wood, the 1st Earl Halifax,
had been Foreign Secretary between 1937 and 1940 including the time of Britain’s
deepest crisis after the Dunkrik evacuation.
Contemplating the possible invasion of Britain, he had taken a short
holiday in the Yorkshire Wolds with his wife in early June of 1940. Having driven up to a high vantage point, he
was moved to think:
All the landscape of the nearer foreground was familiar – its sights,
its sounds, it smells; hardly a field that did not call up some half-forgotten
bit of association; the red-roofed villages and nearby hamlets, gathered as it
were for company round the old greystone church, where men and women like
ourselves, now long dead and gone, had once knelt in worship and prayer. Here in Yorkshire was a true fragment of the
undying England, like the White Cliffs of Dover, or any other part of our land
that Englishmen have loved. Then the
question came, is it possible that the Prussian jackboot will force its way
into this countryside to tread and trample over it at will?
Fortunately for us, due to the sacrifice of the hundreds of
names we had seen during the day, and the many millions of others, we were
still able to love our English countryside, its churches, villages and
hamlets. Long may this appreciation continue.
As we left Bishop Wilton and travelled back home via
Stamford Bridge, the place of another long remembered sacrifice of human life
in European power games, the light of the day was drawing to a close, a day that
had seen us confronted with the sheer scale of the impact of the wars of the
twentieth century on just one small section of Britain.
The physical light of the day was fading, but the memories
of the agonies and sacrifices of so many of our forbears shall never fade.
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