The search for the Book of Remembrance in Edmund Waller School

I am no nearer discovering the fate of the Book of Remembrance of the students who fought in the Great War.

The Sentry, 1921

It was housed in a glass cabinet, high up on the wall beside the entrance to the classroom of 3b, and every day of the school year during 1959-60 I passed it as I went and left the room.

Now when you are nine going on ten the book had little meaning.

I remember it stood open at a page and the names were recorded in black and red ink.

I have no idea if the pages were turned regularly and as far as I can remember it was never referred to, and I never asked.

Back then the Great War had ended just 41 years earlier, and despite the horrific nature of that war, it had already been eclipsed by the more recent conflict.

But many of those who had taken part would only have been coming up to retirement and may yet not even have had grandchildren.

Most would still be fit and have years more ahead of them and the memories of what they endured would be fresh, even if they preferred not to talk about it.

And for those who lived around the school and had attended, the names in red of their fellow students who never returned would be something else that they hadn’t forgotten.

Now I never forgot the book, although the last 59 years have been so crammed with just living that I didn’t give it much of thought, until that is I was asked to write a book about Manchester and the Great War, and then as you do in researching the men, women and children who took part, I came again to the that Remembrance Book.*

I assumed it would no longer still be on the wall and more than likely have been donated to the Imperial War Museum or the Local Studies Centre.

On two separate occasions I contacted the school left my details and waited for a reply.

Sadly I am still waiting, despite follow up emails.

Of course schools are very busy places and the children always take priority so in the absence of a reply from the school I am pondering my options.

I guess an approach to the Local Studies Centre will be the first step and then either the Imperial War Museum or the National Archives at Kew.

Edmund Waller, School, 2007

And in the meantime I wonder if anyone else remembers it or can shed  light on what happened to it.

Location; Edmund Waller School, Waller Road, London SE 14

Picture; The Sentry, 1921, commemorating employees of S & J Watts & Co, Manchester, from a picture postcard issued by Tuck and Sons, courtesy of Tuck db, https://tuckdb.org/ and Edmund Waller School, 2007 from the collection of Liz and Colin Fitzpatrick
*Manchester Remembering 1914-18, Andrew Simpson, The History Press, 2017

The story of one house in Lausanne Road number 8 ........ George Carly of Lausanne Road, born in 1894 and died at the Somme in 1916

The story of one house in Lausanne Road over a century and a half, and of one family who lived there in the 1950s.*

"After a fight", 1916

George Carly and I were neighbours separated by just 40 years and sharing the same house.

Of course I didn’t know him and only discovered his existence yesterday when I began to explore the history of where I had lived in the 1950s.

The family appear on the 1911 census and were still there three years later when the Great War began.

That in its self has drawn me to them fired also by a curiosity over their names.  Mr Carly’s middle name was Garibaldi and his wife’s was Zilpah.

Not that their birth places were unusual.  Mr Carly had been born in Sussex in 1865 and Mrs Carly in Greenwich.

Unknown group of soldiers, date unknown

I suspect given his birth year his father may have admired the Italian nationalist Garibaldi and in time I will I hope discover more about Lucy Zilpah Carly.

But for now it is enough to know that in the April 1911 the Carly’s had been married for 18 years and had six children ranging in age from George who was 17 down to Ivy who was three.

And knowing the house so well it is easy to begin to fit them into the different rooms wonder who slept where and which jobs around the place each was given to do.

My dad always talked about how his was the job of cleaning the fire places and bringing up the coal in his home in Gateshead and I suspect the same would have been true of the Carly’s particularly as they did not employ a servant.

At which point it is easy to slip into speculation about the family.

Mr Clark and his son George described themselves as “catering clerks.”

The remaining children with the exception of Ivy were listed as “student” or at “school” and so I wonder if Edmund Waller was where they went which is the school me and my sisters attended.

The school dates from the 1887 with an extension added in 1899 so it is possible that at least some of them might have attended.

Greetings ........... circa 1918

And I will go looking for school registers and admission books but in the meantime it is George who occupies my thoughts.

At his death he was serving in B Company of the First Battalion Queen’s Westminster Rifles and was killed on September 18 1916 at the Battle of the Somme.

Now if I have got this right the Queens’ Westminster Rifles had been formed in the August of 1914 at 58 Buckingham Gate and had been a Territorial Force and left for France in the November.

Sadly like so many of the men who served in the Great War George’s military records were destroyed which at present leaves us very little other than a reference on the Thiepval Memorial.

Not that this will stop me.

Now I know we inhabited the same house I feel the need to find out more.

Pictures; Daily Mail War Postcards, 1916, and others courtesy of David Harrop

*The story of one house in Lausanne Road, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20story%20of%20one%20house%20in%20Lausanne%20Road

**The London Regiment, The Long, Long Trail, http://www.1914-1918.net/london.htm

The story of one house in Lausanne Road number 9 ........ that Roll of Honour in Edmund Waller school and George Carly of Lausanne Road

Replica Cenotaph, circa 1920

The story of one house in Lausanne Road over a century and a half, and of one family who lived there in the 1950s.*

Growing up in Lausanne Road in the 1950s was to be untouched by the Great War.

Of course the evidence of the Second World War was still all around us.

Many of the bomb sites had yet to be redeveloped and there were those signs announcing EWS and Shelters.*

Added to which there were plenty of gable ends  which had been cemented over and told of the house next door which had been blown away.

But the Great War was different.  It was rarely a topic of conversation which given the more recent conflict was understandable.

And yet those who had participated in it either as combatants or on the Home Front would still be in their late 50s or early 60s, would yet to have retired and some were not yet grandparents.

But I can think of only one moment when it impinged on me and that was at school at Edmund Waller.

In the upstairs hall on a ledge in a glass case was the Roll of Honour, opened at a particular page with those who had survived recorded in black ink and those who had died in red.

I have often wondered if the pages were turned regularly and more recently whether it still exists in the school and is on display.

Today that conflict is remembered in a way that was not the case when I was growing up.

Rightly so we have come again to recognise the sacrifice of that generation but I think all too often we see them as either young men staring back at us in their ill fitting uniforms or as frail individuals with faltering voices in wheel chairs and forget that when that war was over they settled down to productive lives, raising families with decades ahead of them.

Joseph Thomas, circa 1914-15

And I was reminded of this when I met with Nicola whose great uncle had fought in the war and died aged just 23 on the Western Front in 1917.***

He had been one of those young me who had enlisted in the first few months of the outbreak of war and was in the 2nd City Battalion of the Manchester’s which formed the second Manchester Pals Battalion.

Early in 1915 young Joseph Thomas sent a picture postcard to his brother announcing he was coming home on leave.

The card like many of the time carried an image of a group of young soldiers and after posting the story Nicola got in touch and identified her great uncle.

In the family collection was this replica of the Cenotaph made by Kingsway Art China of London.*

Replica Cenotaph, circa 1920

Once these must have been manufactured in their thousands but I doubt that many still exist and those that do will be in collections whose owners have little knowledge of its personal history.

This one however retains that link with the Thomas family and that young man.

And by extension I wonder how many other very personal memorabilia exist in Peckham and which contain a story.

Yesterday I reflected on the story of young George Carly who had lived in our house.

He was  born in 1894 and died on the Western Front at the Battle of the Somme on September 18 1916 and I rather hope that I will uncover something of his.






Pictures; replica of the Cenotaph, circa 1920s courtesy of Nicola O'Neil and Joseph Thomas circa 1914-15 from a picture postcard, 1915 from the collection of David Harrop

*The story of one house in Lausanne Road, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20story%20of%20one%20house%20in%20Lausanne%20Road

**EWS Emergency Water Supplies, Shelters Air Raid Shelters

***Joseph Thomas, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Joseph%20Thomas