Lest We Forget

With so much interest being expressed in the article about the inscriptions on the panels in the Foundation dining room
(see The Old St Beghian issue number 190),
this is a further offering:

Whilst some of the panels date from the mid-1700s there are four in the south-west corner which are evidently early twentieth century replacements. They hold the names of sixty pupils who attended the school in the years between 1900 and 1919. All are carefully carved and would thus probably have been executed under supervision, unlike the hundreds of names on the older panels, some of which are no more than whimsical scratchings.

Seeking to match the names of the sixty to the list of the 184 Old St Beghians (180 Old Boys and four Masters) who gave their lives during World War 1 inevitably proved sober work.

Eight of the carvers had served but did not live beyond the war’s end in November 1918.

Here are the names and ranks of the fallen and the year each had entered the school:

Lieutenant J. S. Scott 1910	2^nd Lieutenant P. T. Loft 1913
2^nd Lieutenant F. A. Rankin 1910	2^nd Lieutenant R. M. Calvert 1910
2^nd Lieutenant J. Routledge 1907	2^nd Lieutenant P. H. Stott 1910
2^nd Lieutenant T. E. Wray 1913	Captain D. F. Neilson DSO MC 1906

Photos of Donald Francis Neilson and also his Memorial Certificate from The Commonwealth War Graves Commission website may be seen here.

I guess that 2^nd Lieutenants Wray and Loft, having entered the school only one year before the outbreak of war, would perhaps have been no more than teenagers when they were killed.

Entries from The Commonwealth War Graves Commission Registers for each individual mentioned above, with details of their rank, regiment, unit and date of death, may be seen here.

A photo of the 1908 St Bees School cricket team, taken from ‘The Story of St Bees (1583-1939)’ may be seen here.
The text beneath the photograph states that
‘All of the above team served with distinction in the Great War, in which seven – Plummer, Frith, Railton, Jenkins, Halliwell, Saportas and Neilson – gave their lives’. A red dot identifies the seven.

‘You were our hope, we dreamed great things for you.
God intervened: and so our dreams came true.’