Remembering West Yorkshire's fallen

Bradford's Cenotaph remembers the fallen of all wars

Every West Yorkshire town and village has at least one war memorial and, big or small, they take many forms.

With millions dead across the world it's hardly surprising that those left behind wanted to remember the fallen.

From statues to plaques, West Yorkshire was the same and many of these memorials can still be seen today

They all take different forms and tell different stories but they ensure that the names of the dead have lived on into the 21st century.

Huddersfield's War Memorial at Greenhead Park, put up in 1924

In Bradford Cathedral, for instance, a stained glass window features a soldier from the 6th Battalion, West Yorkshire Regiment. Mortally wounded he looks up at Christ dying on the cross.

Another light in the same window shows a battlefield grave marked only by a soldier's helmet hung on the end of a rifle.

There's another First World War memorial immediately below the window in Bradford Cathedral. A simple plaque reads: "In honour of the Bradford Pals (16th and 18th Battalions West Yorkshire Regiment) 1914-1918 who fought for our freedom and many of whom died on the Flanders Field".

On the morning of July 1, 1916 2000 young men from Bradford left their trenches in Northern France to advance across No Man's Land. It was the first hour of the first day of the Battle of the Somme and by the end of that hour, 1770 Bradford Pals had either been killed or injured.

In Huddersfield Legh Tolson gave his house and land at Ravensknowle to the people of Dalton in memory of his two nephews who were killed in the War and the house is now home to the town's Tolson Museum.

The stained glass memorial in Bradford Cathedral remembers the dead of WWI

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission records that one of Legh's nephews, Second Lieutenant Robert Huntriss Tolson from Dalton in Huddersfield, fighting with the 15th Battalion, West Yorkshire Regiment, was 31 when he was killed on July 1, 1916. He is buried in the Serre Road Cemetery in France.

Also in Huddersfield, a brass plaque in the main Post Office in Northumberland Street records that 224 "members of staff in the Huddersfield district served during the War" as well as listing the 20 who "made the supreme sacrifice."

Among those listed is E.S. Pawson. Private Ernest Sykes Pawson died in Belgium on August 4, 1917. He has no known grave.

A very unusual plaque can be found at Lumb Falls near Heptonstall. Unveiled by the Elmet Trust in 2007, it's both a memorial to six men who were killed during the First World War - but whose visit to the Falls had been captured in a pre-war photograph - and to former poet laureate and Mytholmroyd lad Ted Hughes who was inspired by the photo to write a poem about the futility of war.

But perhaps the most familiar war memorials are those we find in the middle of parks and villages. Over ninety years on from the end of the "war to end all wars" Featherstone recently unveiled a new war memorial.

The memorial plaque at Lumb Falls, Heptonstall (Pic: John Rumsby)

It wasn't that the town had forgotten to honour its war dead until now but when the war memorial dating from 1924 was blown down in the 1970s it was replaced by a concrete lamp post on a breeze block plinth. There were no names on the original memorial and anyone wanting to find the names of the dead had to consult the Roll of Honour in Featherstone Library.

Made of brick, Featherstone's latest memorial lists the names and regiments of those who gave their lives on stainless steel plaques. The memorial also commemorates those from the town who died in subsequent conflicts.

In 2008, the BBC West Yorkshire webteam went around West Yorkshire to collect images of war memorials in the county. Take a look at our gallery here.