SKIPTON schoolchildren are to receive copies of The War Memorial - and the lives of Skipton people during the First World War. Produced by the civic society, it uses accounts and from the Craven Herald of the time.

WHAT started as an exhibition in Skipton’s Holy Trinity Church of a single month from 1914 has ended up as a booklet detailing what life was like in Skipton throughout the 1914 to 1918 First World War.

The work of Skipton Civic Society, the booklet, which is to be handed out to the town’s schoolchildren ahead of next month’s hundredth anniversary of the end of the First World War, uses photographs, accounts and letters from The Craven Herald at the time. and also from the book, Craven’s Part in the Great War.

“The War Memorial and the lives of Skipton people during the First World War started life as an exhibition in Holy Trinity Church for the month of August, 1914. We decided to re-use the research and information in a more lasting form, and to add details about what was happening in Skipton during the war, going through the war years in the Craven Herald and trying to give a picture of what life was like at home,” say civic society members, Ella Hatfield and Susan Wrathmell.

The booklet includes different sections - the ‘call to arms’, women and families, industry and commerce, teachers in the trenches, prisoners, medals and commendations, and peace celebrations.

It also has a special section on the Clarke family, and the deaths of brothers, Tom and Ennie, both in the war.

Tom and Priscilla Clarke settled in Skipton and by early 1911, had 16 children, ten of who survived. At the outbreak of the First World War, the family was living in Byron Street. Their oldest boy, Tom, 20, was already a soldier, serving with Alexandra Princess of Wales Own Regiment, the Green Howards. For the 1911 census, Tom was at home with his parents, as recorded in the census, with his father, Thomas Henry, 52, a gas fitter; his mother, Priscilla, 41, housewife and mother; sister, Essie, 21, a power loom weaver; brother, Sidney, 19, a cotton warehouse packer; brother, Fred, 14, a weavers’ tenter; brother, Ennie, 13, a newsboy; Doris, 10, Florence Ivy, 9, and Rosa, 6, all at Brougham School; and Bertha, four, and one month old Ethel.

The Clarkes had already lost two sons, one aged eight, and another aged two, while four others had died as babies.

Their youngest, Ennie, joined the Duke of Wellington’s Regiment at the outbreak of the war.

Tom was wounded in March 1915 at Neuve Chappelle and was taken to the military hospital at Netley, near Southampton, where he died eight days later.

He was the seventh of Thomas and Priscilla’s children who they followed to the cemetery, and in the pictures taken at the time, his sisters can be seen following their brother’s coffin, flowers in hands. Tom was given full military honours, only men who died in England could be brought home for burial - of that at least, his parents could be grateful.

Almost exactly two years later, in 1917, Ennie was killed in France, at just 19 years old, and was buried at Thiepval. Their brothers, Fred and Sidney, both fought in the war, but unlike Tom and Ennie, survived.

Thomas Clarke, their father, died in 1931 aged 72 and is buried with Tom and his baby brother Robert, in Waltonwrays Cemetery. Priscilla lived through the Second World War and died in 1948, aged 78.

Peace celebrations took place in Skipton on Saturday, August 2, 1919. They involved sports, lunch and tea, organised by a specially formed committee.

It included a United Thanksgiving service near a memorial on the High Street; a dinner at the Drill Hall for discharged sailors and soldiers and their wives, and also the wives of those still serving.

There was ‘children’s sports, in ‘Blue Buttons’ field off Woodlands Drive, Gargrave Road; and teas in Sunday schools for children from three to 15 years old.

The drill hall dinner was to cater for 700 people, spread over two sittings, with entertainment from the Skipton Permanent |Orchestra. Food was provided by the town’t hotels and restaurants and included joints of meat, veal and ham pies, cold salmon and several barrels of beer. Cigarettes were handed out, and each man still serving was given five shillings.

The thanksgiving service went ahead next to a memorial at the top of the High Street - a temporary structure of wood and plaster that looked similar to Sir Edwin Lutyens’ temporary Cenotaph in Whitehall, London. Painted in gilt letters on one side of the Skipton shrine was the inscription: “In loving memory of the men and women of Skipton, who at their country’s call served on many seas, in many lands and in the air’ and on the opposite side, the verse ‘Greater love hath no man than this - to lay down his life for his friends.”

The crowd sang God Bless Our Native Land and O God Our Help in Ages Past, and children placed flowers on the shrine.

At the conclusion of the service, a Distinguished Conduct Medal (DCM) qwas presented by Colonel Bateman of the West Riding Regiment to Private M D Long of Court Lane.

On April 17, 1918, Pte Long’s regiment was near Arras when it faced enemy shelling for six hours. Pte Long volunteered for a counter attack and after his officer was killed, assumed charge and rallied his colleagues, recapturing the line, taking one machine gun and ten prisoners in the process.

When hearing of Pte Long’s bravery, there was an outburst of cheering, repeated when the medal was pinned to his chest by the Colonel.

Some 2,000 copies of the booklet have been printed. About a third will be given away to groups and schools, while the remainder will be sold to cover the costs of printing. Donations towards the printing have been made by both the Skipton Mechanics Institute, and Skipton Town Council, which is responsible for the upkeep of the war memorial.

Copies of the booklet, priced at £1 each, are available from Skipton Library, High Street and Skipton Tourist Information Centre, Skipton Town Hall, It will also be on sale on the High Street on Remembrance Day, Sunday, November 11, ahead of parade to the War Memorial.