The Scottish Military Research Group - Commemorations Project

spoons

I know there has been a bit of controversy over a couple of posts in the past and I don’t want to wind anyone up here. Quite often we have a memorial which is originally listed under the Parish name and for some reason or another it is changed to the name of the town or village. In other cases we have a memorial initially listed under the town or village where it is located and then subsequently changed to the Parish name. UKNIWM seems to have the same degree of difficulty in its records, sometimes listing the same memorial twice under two different names! These are my thoughts and I don’t offer them as absolute facts.

Now I don’t have a magic solution but I have thought about it and have a few good examples of where problems might or might not arise.

My local memorial is in the village/town of Dalry and the parish is also Dalry – no problem.

The civic war memorial in nearby New Galloway is inscribed to “the men of this parish”, but the parish name is Kells. I currently have this listed as the New Galloway memorial because that is what it is known as locally and many newly arrived locals who do not visit the church do not associate themselves with the parish of Kells. All the men of New Galloway are listed regardless of whether they worshipped in the Church of Scotland or the local Episcopal Church – strictly the parish is a Church of Scotland concept but has legal recognition because Church of Scotland is the established church.

There is a memorial on the outside of Balmaghie Parish Church merely inscribed “…in memory of those who laid down their lives….” without mention of parish/village etc. You might think it is for Balmaghie Parish but at the time of WW1, Balmaghie was the church of Scotland parish with the largest village being Lauriston (about 3 miles from the church). Lauriston had its own church (united free) but that no longer exists. There is no ‘place’ Balmaghie. The memorial has names for those who worshipped in both churches. UKNIWM has it listed as Bridgestone which is the name of the nearest farm to the present church (it is out in the countryside).

In New Galloway Town Hall there is a Roll of Honour to men who died and this does not mention New Galloway, Kells or the words town/village or Parish, so who is it for? I have listed it as New Galloway because that is where it is, but I would bet it was dealt with by the same committee who dealt with the WW2 additions to the parish memorial.

In the index for Dumfries and Galloway memorials I have listed all memorials under the name that seems most appropriate, usually the name of the town/village – all memorials in New Galloway are listed as such, but you cannot treat the Balmaghie memorial like that as the church is miles from anywhere and certainly not in the nearest village of Lauriston so I have listed it as Balmaghie. Even I cannot be consistant.

As I said, no solutions offered but at least with an understanding of the issues we should be able to understand the nature of the problem and maybe we can have a little (temperate) discussion on the issue because I would be very interested to hear anyone else's views.

\Paul

apanderson · Posted: Wed Feb 04, 2009 11:12 pm Post subject:

Very well put Paul.

I've come across this subject not particularly pertaining to war memorials, more genealogy, where places are either 'no more', have been engulfed within a larger district or are now known as something completely different.

Logie (which is just outside Stirling), and Kilsyth for example have changed counties so many times, I for one, can't keep up.

Something else I have discovered, is that a good number of 'Burial Grounds' local to me are wrongly named on the CWGC database.

Anne

David McNay · Posted: Thu Feb 05, 2009 9:03 am Post subject:

I'm as guilty as anyone else of just putting the location of the memorial.

For example - Newmains memorial covers Newmains, Morningside, Waterloo, Chapel and parts of Wishaw. This is depsite Waterloo and Morningside having their own memorials. However, I think I listed it simply as "Newmains".

There are others, I'm sure.

As far as I'm concerned there is no rule set in stone for this site. If the memorial is officially known as one name but the locals refer to it as another we should list both. Official or not, if someone comes searching for the "common" name and we don't have it, they won't find the memorial they're looking for.

Adam Brown · Posted: Thu Feb 05, 2009 1:06 pm Post subject:

There is a problem just listing the parish name if it is unfamiliar. How many people would know Barry is Carnoustie for example?

Also just like Counties and Regions, parishes have changed over the years too so I don't think we can be hard and fast on inisisting it must be used. Spoons recent post on Rankinston in Ayrshire shows how much things can change over a few years. We can't insist on using the 1920s parish name because memorials are still having names added now.

It's actually a bit of a minefiled so I don't think we need to be hard on fast on this because things change.

e.g we could have one of the five titles below and I think any of them would be acceptable. (I can't actually remember what I've used for this one).

Clyne War Memorial, Brora
Brora War Memorial, Parish of Clyne
Brora War Memorial, Clyne
Brora, Clyne
Clyne, Brora

I think we just have to be sensible and take it on a case by case basis. If we know what the locals are calling a memorial then that is what we use, we can add an extra parish or town name too for clarity. We can expand on our choice of title within our first post and if others disagree then we can come to a consensus and change it.

Adam

ADP · Joined: 13 Jun 2008 Posts: 467 Location: Edinburgh

Unless the parish is stipulated as referring to the church, I take it to mean the civil parish - the local government unit that existed as that up to 1930, done away with by the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1929, but still in use to describe the land of that parish for much longer. The civil parish boundaries were shown on OS maps until the late 1970s. They may have been officially done away with by the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973 - that which gave us the Regions and Districts from 1975.

The problem that Anne refers to above of parishes moving across county boundaries was an issue mostly addressed by the Boundary Commission set up by the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1889. Its main tasks were to tidy up parishes which straddled county boundaries, or had parts detached from the main body of the parish; and to tidy up detached pieces of counties. It succeeded in most of these, but not all. Logie parish, around Bridge of Allan (not to be confused with the other Logie parishes around Scotland) had parts in Stirlingshire, Clackmannanshire and Perthshire. Until May 1891, it was indexed by GROS as Perthshire, and after that date as Stirlingshire. Parts of the parish were transferred into Alloa, Alva and Lecropt parishes. Part of Lecropt parish was transferred into Logie. The county boundaries were altered such that the whole of the re-shaped parish of Logie fell into Stirlingshire.

One county that the Boundary Commission failed to resolve was Dunbartonshire. A detached part remained - containing the parishes of Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch. It remained that way until the administrative counties were done away with in 1975.

ADP

ADP · Joined: 13 Jun 2008 Posts: 467 Location: Edinburgh

I offer another variation for the memorial in Brora that Adam cites above. How about: Clyne Parish War Memorial, Brora. Like Adam, I can't tell you that my variation on that theme is correct, but I like it.

ADP

Caroline · Joined: 04 Aug 2008 Posts: 17

I do like the simplicity of Clyne Parish WM, Brora, but it still raises the spectre of "is this memorial for the fallen who lived in, or who were connected to, the parish, of just those of one particular church?"

Admittedly, if it's off any church's property and on civic property, then it's more likely the former.

I think the best approach would be to have the primary location described as the place the memorial is IN, or one easily found these days, with the (now probably forgotten, parish name second, ie Brora WM, Parish of Clyne.

This problem is quite extensive. For example most people are aware of Stonehaven's location, but how many know that the parish name was Fetteresso and can say where Kirkton of Fetteresso is?

Caroline