The Scottish Military Research Group - Commemorations Project

spoons

ADP's recent post on the Creetown thread prompted me to get back to a problem I looked at before but never really resolved.

Quite a number of memorials are generally known by a name other than inscribed on the memorial or at the original dedication. I am thinking mainly about parish versus town or village names.

For example I have had people tell me that the Kells Parish Memorial in New Galloway is a New Galloway memorial and not Kells. "The Kells parish memorial is in the church". This may well be the modern perception but is clearly incorrect as can be seen from the engraving on the memorial.

I have also had the problem the other way round when a professional genealogist insisted that we did not have his local memorial in Hightae listed. It is listed, but under its correct title of Royal Four Towns.

I have had similar problems with the Gatehouse of Fleet memorial which is actually for Anwoth and Girthon.

Other memorials present no problem, for example my local memorial is to the parish of Dalry, but fortunately Dalry is also the name of the village.

I have looked through 'my' area and there is a real mish-mash, some having village first followed by parish, some the other way around, sometimes in brackets, some with just the parish and others with just the village. I would like to go through and rename them but don't wish to just do my own thing.

I like Adam's title for the Creetown memorial 'Kirkmabreck Parish, Creetown' - correct title of memorial, comma, name of town or village.

For the regional lists of memorials, perhaps this should be reversed? 'Creetown, Kirkmabreck Parish' would group all the memorials in Creetown together so someone could find it even if they didn't know the name of it. In another example 'Royal Four Towns, Hightae' would be the name of the thread and 'Hightae, Royal Four Towns' would be how it would appear in the list.

Does that make sense or is it too complicated?

\Paul

DelBoy · Posted: Sun Nov 20, 2011 11:50 am Post subject:

I understand the problem.
Up my neck of the woods the Barry parish memorial is never called as such, it's always called Carnoustie.

Similarly when I've looked on the forum for a memorial I've learned the town which I assumed would have been the name of the memorial area is in fact something I'd never heard of before, eg. Pitlochry and Scoonie spring to mind.

Whatever is used, as long as it's standardised, I'm not fussed.

Cheers,
Derek.

dhubthaigh · Posted: Sun Nov 20, 2011 12:22 pm Post subject:

We've been here before;
http://warmemscot.s4.bizhat.com/viewtopic.php?t=4513&highlight=naming

There's also a 'Naming Memorials' in admin. I'm going to refresh myself in due course of the posts as I am heading out. I do remember the debate was keen at the time though!

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

My opinion is that if it is a parish memorial, the title should include the parish name. If the town or village name is different from the parish name, as it is in many cases, then that should be in the title too.

The civil parish (not always of the same boundaries as the church parish, both having evolved over the years for their separate purposes) was a level of local government until 1930, being discontinued by the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1929.

Without looking further into the individual parish, my guess is that the New Galloway memorial is the civil parish memorial, and the one in Kells Parish Church is in memory of the fallen belonging to that church. I am open to be found wrong on that if need be.

ADP

Kenneth Morrison

spoons · Posted: Sun Nov 20, 2011 3:36 pm Post subject:

Thanks Ken, I will take that on board. Meanwhile, as far a I know, all of the Dumfrie and Galloway memorials have an up to date OS Map Ref. If you copy that and paste it into http://www.streetmap.co.uk/ (without spaces) then it will take you straight there and you can zoom in and out to show the level of detail you want.

\Paul

Kenneth Morrison · Posted: Sun Nov 20, 2011 3:52 pm Post subject:

Thanks Paul - didn't think to use the OS ref that way (It's an age thing)
Mind you D&G is not a problem now - it's all those foreign places like the Lothians that confuse me. Confused

_________________
Ken

Adam Brown · Posted: Sun Nov 20, 2011 4:51 pm Post subject:

I agree with Paul. Parish, then town for title (if appropriate i.e. if the two names are / were interchangeable).

And Town, then parish for lists.

Just to clarify my first statement; not every parish had just one memorial, some had two or more so not every memorial would necessarily be that parish's memorial (and even be the same list of names on each memorial).

I'm probably muddying the waters here, so let me try to explain. Farr Parish in Sutherland has five memorials and not one of them covers the whole parish. Eddrachilies has two, and again neither cover the whole parish so it would be wrong to title them as Eddrachillis Parish, Scourie and Eddrachillis Parish, Kinlochbervie.

Just to confuse matters further the memorial at Bonar Bridge has the inscription as the Creich Parish memorial. It is in Creich but a dispute when fund-raising saw Rosehalll build its own memoria. Most of the names on the Rosehall memorial are not on the Creich memorial so although it says it is the parish memorial it doesn't actually cover the whole parish.

So the upshot is I would only like to see the parish name in the title if we know it covers the whole parish.

Where parish name and the location of the town are different Carnoustie / Barry and Royal Four Towns / Hightae we should definitely include both.

Adam

spoons · Posted: Sun Nov 20, 2011 5:35 pm Post subject:

thanks Adam, I will set about adjusting those in Dumfries and Galloway accordingly

\Paul

kinnethmont · Joined: 19 Dec 2006 Posts: 1649 Location: Aberdeenshire

As Mark ( dhubthaigh ) points out, and the link thread confirms, we were there before and the format ( where something other than the Parish name had to be included for some reason ) was agreed.
_________________
Jim

If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

www.kinnethmont.co.uk

Jim · Joined: 30 May 2008 Posts: 195

I suppose the answer is for contributors to online forums to include as much info as possible/ available and for casual enquirers to be prepared to do the additional work to ensure they're looking in the right place.