Pte Edward Longthorne - 5th Yorks and Lancs

One of the many men who died while serving for the North Eastern Railway (N.E.R.) was Edward Longthorne, and one of over 400 men who volunteered from Shildon Works. The N.E.R., one of the largest employers in the north of England, released over 18,000 of its employees to serve in the armed forces during the First World War, many of them joining the 17th (North Eastern Railway) Battalion of the Northumberland Fusiliers, which was also called the Railway Battalion. Within a month over 1,000 of their employees had joined the 17th Battalion and were beginning training in Hull. Many saw this as a ‘Great Adventure.’ By the end of the war, 2,236 men from the company had died on military service overseas; others were killed at home by bombardments of east coast ports, such as the raid on Scarborough, Hartlepool and Whitby, and in the three Zeppelin raids on York (103 German airship and bomber raids on Great Britain killed 557 people).

Edward was born on March 5, 1897 at Witton Park. The only son and one of five children to William Longthorne and Caroline Oddy, who married on 29 September 1890 in Crook. Eventually, the family moved from Witton-le-Wear to settle in Shildon. On the 1911 census, Edward was aged 14 and still at school, living with his family at 5 Diamond Street. On leaving school Edward was employed as a hammer driver at Shildon Works and was also a member of the National Union of Railwaymen, Shildon 2 Branch. He enlisted in Shildon and initially joined as 32/679 Private of the 32nd Battalion, Northumberland Fusiliers (North Eastern Railway Pioneers). He then transferred and served as No. 242283, Private, 1/5th (T.F.) Battalion, the York and Lancaster Regiment. He fought in the Third Battle of Ypres, known more ominously as Passchendaele. The Battalion war diaries record that Edward was wounded on October 9 or 10, 1917 near Vlamertinge, Ypres. He died of his wounds on October 15, 1917, at 20 years of age and is buried in Boulogne Eastern Cemetery, France. Edward is remembered on the following: All Saints' Churchyard Cross (now on Redworth Road), St John’s roadside statue, Central Parade, the Shildon Wesleyan Methodist Bible Class brass plaque (location currently unknown), and the North East Railway Memorial, Station Rise, York. Edward’s parents would remain in Shildon with his father William passing away in 1929 at Lambton Street, aged sixty-six, and his mother Caroline in 1950, also in Shildon, at eighty-seven years of age. Both are buried in the town.

The N.E.R. Memorial

After the war, thousands of memorials were built across Britain. Among the most prominent designers of memorials was architect Sir Edwin Lutyens, described by Historic England as "the leading English architect of his generation." Lutyens designed the Cenotaph on Whitehall in London, which became the focus for the national Remembrance Sunday commemorations, as well as the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing—the largest British war memorial anywhere in the world—and the Stone of Remembrance which appears in all large Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemeteries and in several of Lutyens' war memorials in Britain, including the North Eastern Railway's. At a meeting in February 1920 the N.E.R.'s board voted to allocate £20,000 to the memorial project rather than seek donations from the company's workforce, and commissioned Lutyens to design it. Lutyens' commission was confirmed in October 1921, for a fee of £700 plus out-of-pocket expenses. The N.E.R.'s deputy general manager explained that Lutyens had been chosen because he was "the fashionable architect and therefore could do no wrong."

Design

The dedication is inscribed in the centre of the rear part of the screen wall: "IN REMEMBRANCE OF THOSE MEN OF THE NORTH EASTERN RAILWAY WHO GAVE THEIR LIVES FOR THEIR COUNTRY THE COMPANY PLACES THIS MONUMENT"; the dates of the First World War are inscribed to either side. The 2,236 names were inscribed on panels affixed to the wall. Behind the Stone of Remembrance are 15 slates set into the floor of the memorial bearing the names of the L.N.E.R.'s dead from the Second World War. The North Eastern Railway War Memorial was finally constructed once the ancient Monuments Board approved Lutyens' modified design; it was unveiled by Field Marshal Herbert Plumer, 1st Baron Plumer at a ceremony on June 14, 1924. A crowd of five to six thousand people gathered for the ceremony, among them multiple civic officials and officers of the L.N.E.R. and former N.E.R., including Sir Ralph Wedgwood, chief officer of the L.N.E.R.; the Sheriff of York; the lord mayors of Bradford, Hull, and York; and the Archbishop of York, Cosmo Gordon Lang. Sentries from the Durham Light Infantry stood at the four corners of the Stone of Remembrance. Among those to give speeches was Edward Grey, 1st Viscount Grey of Fallodon, a member of the N.E.R.'s board and the former foreign secretary famous for his remark "the lamps are going out." Grey spoke of the losses caused by the war: "The old North Eastern board and its general manager numbered some twenty persons. Out of those twenty, four lost sons in the war; three lost only sons. There is no reason to suppose that proportion is exceptional." At the conclusion of the service, the Last Post was sounded and the crowd observed two minutes' silence.

colin adamson