The Botcherby War Memorial once stood next to the school in Victoria Road. It now stands at the corner of Victoria Road and Warwick Road.

The memorial is a rough-hewn stone surmounted by a cross. One side is smooth and bears the image of a sheathed sword with a wreath.

Alongside the names of 15 men are inscribed “In memory and honour of the men of Botcherby who fell in the Great War”. Beneath the list of their names is the inscription: “To our glorious dead”.

The Memorial, cut by the sculptors at Messrs Beattie and Co of Murrell Hill, was unveiled three years after the war on Easter Sunday, March 28, 1921.

There are no records of commemorations at the Memorial, although in recent years a poppy wreath has been placed on the cross on Armistice Day.

Tom Story, who was 26 when he died on November 18, 1916, was buried in Waggon Road, Beaumont-Hamel, France.

He had been a bank clerk and lived in Botcherby House. When he enlisted in September, 1914, he was living in Hull. He was placed in the 9th Battalion of the Border Regiment and given the Service Number 15259. He was made a Lance Corporal in May, 1915, and became a Second Lieutenant 12 weeks later on August 27.

In July 1916, Tom Story was fighting with the Lonsdale Battalion, the 11th Battalion of the Border Regiment, in the Battle of the Somme and he was one of 15 officers who were called to fill the commissioned ranks. Tom died the day after the Battle of the Somme officially ended.

His mother received a letter from Lieutenant WR Gillespie. It read: “Dear Mrs Story, It is my painful duty to inform you that your son, Second Lieutenant Tom Story, was killed in action.

"The Battalion after lying out during the dark on snowy ground, went forward at dawn with the other battalions of the brigade to attack the enemy’s trenches. Heavy machine-gun fire opened as soon as the enemy realised that the battalion was ‘pushing’.

"Your son’s platoon had just reached the enemy’s barbed wire, Tom at its head, when an enemy bullet brought him down. I am glad to be able to tell you that his death was painless ... His platoon, to which he was attached, idolised him for his strength, his courage, and his good-nature: and we, remaining members of the company mess, miss him no less.”

The other names on the memorial are: Thomas Henry Little, of the Royal Air Force, who died on October 13, 1918; Herbert Miller Crook of the Army Service Corps, who died five days later; 22 year-old Harry Armstrong, who died in August, 1918; his elder brother, Joseph; Robert Cartner, originally from Houghton, who died in March, 1918; Robert William Caddle, who was 35, when he died in October, 1917; brothers, Thomas William and George Henry Hall; Roland Johnston, who served in the 7th Camerons and his brother, Thomas Henry, who was only 19 when he died on August 24, 1918; Richard James Kirk; Joseph Routledge; Thomas Stanley Winthorpe and Joseph Henry Skelton.

It is a fine tribute to these men that the book - Botcherby Heroes Remembered 1914–1918 by James M Robinson, Alex Proudfoot and Derek Nash (P3 Publications, £7.99) - should be published 100 years after they gave their lives for their country.

Review by STEVE MATTHEWS
Bookends, Carlisle and Keswick
www.bookscumbria.com