Sharing the memories of the Great War

Yesterday I took possession on loan of a wonderful collection of material from the Great War.

They have been collected by David Harrop who has been exhibiting many of his postcards, medals letters and photographs from both world wars at the Memorial Hall in Southern Cemetery.*

And some will form the core of my new book on Manchester and the Great War and will also feature in the Great War stories in the blog**

Now without the original source material you are stuck and so now I can begin.

The first task will be just to sift through the postcards, medals, letters and photographs along with all the official correspondence that came from a modern war and from that will flow the stories.

What is particularly moving about the collection is that David has been able to follow particular families, starting with a young man’s enlistment to the letters home and his discharge or more sadly the news of his death and the correspondence about the posthumous medals and war pension.

And in the way these things work it will be impossible to draw a strict line between Manchester, and Salford, Stockport and the nearby towns of  Ashton and Oldham and Rochdale, if only because some of those in the collection came from one, lived in another and worked across another municipal border.

It is an important collection and I am immensely grateful to David for providing me with so much from it.

That said the pressure is on both because I need to make progress but also because some of the items will appear in two exhibitions David is mounting.***


*David Harrop, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/David%20Harrop

**The Great War, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20Great%20War

***The Atkinson, Lord Street, Southport from July 28 and Oldham Archives, Union Street, Oldham, from August 4