Chorlton, Manchester and the Great War, reflections on the forthcoming centenary and an appeal for help

William Eric Lunt, aged 10 on Sandy Lane circa 1905

This is William Eric Lunt aged about 10 on Sandy Lane sometime around 1905.

He was born here in Chorlton in 1895 and died of his wounds on the Western Front in the October of 1916.

His family had farmed in the township throughout the 19th century and in all probability into the century before.

I can only begin to sense the loss his parents felt at the death of their son.

But of course this was an ordeal that was endured by so many here and across the world.

And next year we shall be remembering those years and the human sacrifice along with that vast loss of treasure which could have been used to improve the lives of people.

For most of us it will be an intensely moving moment allowing us to look back into our own families and explore their experiences.

In my case I can count six members who participated.

George Bradford Simpson, circa 1918

They included a great grandfather, my maternal grandfather, two great uncles, and two uncles.

Added to this because one of my grandmother’s was German there will be family members who were in the armed forces of Imperial Germany.

All of which is a trailer to the sheer amount of material on the Great War which will come our way next year.

For 2014 will be the centenary of the outbreak of that conflict and we will be deluged by books, documentaries, fictional accounts as well as films, plays and plenty of new specialist web sites.

And if all goes well I may be making my own contribution with a book of memories, photographs and stories from across Manchester covering the years of the First World War.

So this is an appeal for anyone who would like to share their own family history of the war to get in touch, using the comment box, or via my facebook and twitter accounts.

But, and here I can perhaps be accused of hypocrisy I do have a slight nagging doubt about the degree to which the forthcoming event will be driven by financial considerations, and also begs the question of the correctness in digging around in the lives of people who were involved and who should be afforded a degree of privacy.

Unknown British soldier, circa 1918

Added to this is the very real danger that the amount of coverage may just make the public a little tired of the event long before we reach August 2014 which will be a great disservice to the men and women who were swept up by that war.

All of which leads to the simple observation that perhaps less is better than more.

After all that war has passed out of living memory and in its way is now almost as remote to us as are the wars with Revolutionary and Napoleonic France or indeed the Hundred Years War.

That said I think it is important that we should mark the event with an exploration of the people who “did their bit.”  

And I think it should focus more on local communities rather than the big picture which has been visited and revisited by historians since the Armistice in 1918.

Unknown British soldier, circa 1918

So I shall return to young William Eric Lunt and the other men who went to war from Chorlton, along with the families who waved them off, and those who worked the factories ran the essential services and looked after the wounded in the Red Cross voluntary hospitals all over the city.






Picture; the young William Eric Gaunt, from the Lloyd collection, and the photograph of George Bradford Simpson, and the unknown soldiers  from the collection of Andrew Simpson