Some of the men who went to fight from Oldham .......... pictures of the Great War

Now I am at the limits of what I know about this picture.

It is a group of soldiers outside the Oldham Colloseum and comes from the collection of David Harrop.

I don’t have a date and am not sure what they were doing there.

If you look closely some of the men are wearing spurs, one is holding what looks like a harness and most are wearing those leather belts which I always associate with the cavalry.

The posters behind them advertise the Oldham Colloseum but the name of the big star of the week is obscured so it is difficult to get a date from the billing and likewise the announcement of BOXING gives up no other clues.

So there you have it, but I am confident there will be someone who has far more military knowledge than me and will be able to tell us more.

And I would like that if only to provide us with a little more on these men.

Some smile back at the camera, one strikes a defiant pose and a few and they are the older men in the picture look back with sombre expressions which I guess pretty much sums up the range of feelings of men swept up by that conflict.



Picture; from the collection of David Harrop

“Dear Husband, we are just off to Aunties” .............. a postcard from Oldham in 1915

In age of emails, facebook and the mobile the sending of a message on a picture postcard seems so anachronistic and yet I rather like the idea.

Of course it helped that the frequent collections and deliveries during a day meant that a card sent first thing in the morning might well be on the table by midday.

So this one sent on a Sunday evening in March would in all probability have arrived the following morning and been read by Private Joseph Platt of B Company, the 24th Manchester Regiment later that day.

It is a mix of the usual personal messages.  His wife tells him that she will be sending him “a few things in the morning” and was pleased with  the photos he had sent which “are good ones,  [adding] we are all well and glad you are, it is lovely this morning, with love from all.”

Now I can’t be sure but I think she will be Clara Platt who had been married to Joseph for fourteen years.

In the April of 1911 they had been had been living in the Liberal Chub in Hollinwood, in Oldham where Mr Platt had been employed as the steward and they had a daughter born in 1900 and a son born in 1910.

And I think I have found some at least of his military records.  There is a reference to a Private Joseph Platt of the Manchester Regiment having been awarded the British War Medal and Victory Medal and who was killed on the Western Front in the August of 1918.

In time I would like to dig deeper and see what more I may be able to find out about both Private Platt and his family.

Location; Oldham

Picture; picture postcard, 1915, from the collection of David Harrop