Can you help with names?

I THOUGHT this picture might be of interest to your readers.

It shows the football team at Cowley St John Boys’ School, off Cowley Road, Oxford, and was taken after they won the Oxfordshire Schools’ Shield in the 1953-4 season.

KEITH WARD Combewell Garsington

Memorials are all shapes

BILL Law wrote about a battlefield cross in the village church at Coleshill, near Faringdon, in memory of Lieutenant Jacob Edward Pleydell Bouverie, killed in the First World War (Memory Lane, September 29).

Oxford Mail:

Several other Oxfordshire churches have single battlefield crosses and one or two are in external locations. There are nine in SS Peter and Paul Church, Deddington, and eight at St Mary the Virgin, Wootton, near Woodstock.

Oxfordshire Family History Society (OFHS) is trying to record details of all Oxfordshire war memorials. The project, begun by the late Michael Popkin, records details of memorials, but not full details of listed people.

The term ‘war memorial’ has a wide definition and includes individual memorials, war memorial halls, church fitments and other items donated in memory of a person who died as a result of enemy action, as well as the memorial cross. Rolls of Honour or Service are also recorded. The archives cover all wars, not just the two world wars.

Individuals and village history groups are researching details of people listed on their war memorials and OFHS will try to obtain a copy of their findings. Most are publishing their research in booklets, with proceeds going to church funds or similar causes.

At the end of the First World War, many companies, clubs and schools compiled Rolls of Honour or Service which have not been recorded. Information on any such rolls would be appreciated from your readers.

Also in the First World War, ‘street shrines’ are recorded as being erected in Banbury and in the parish of SS Mary and John, East Oxford. They were usually on the walls of homes in the relevant streets. Were similar shrines erected elsewhere in Oxfordshire?

The centenary of the start of the First World War is being commemorated in many places by the erection of new war memorials, benches, trees etc. Details would be appreciated.

The OFHS project relates to Oxfordshire since 1974. Other records and databases are based on pre-1974 counties. Please call 01865 880792 or write to the address below.

JOHN L BLAKEMAN (OFHS War Memorial Co-ordinator) 24 Newland Close Eynsham Oxon OX29 4LE

Memory Lane this week

 

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