Site Guide

Notes on using this site

Here are a few ideas which will help you make the most of this site:

1. Surnames are at the top of the page. Scroll the cursor along the black band and click on the letter you have chosen and it will take you to a page with servicemen’s surnames. The sidebar stays the same throughout the site. At the bottom of each page is a map which shows where the servicemen lived or were associated via their parents.
2. Comments. At the bottom of the page there is a comments section – this is for you to add any information about the serviceman you are reading about. Please add something – it helps to enrich the site and prevents it from stagnating. Having researched the lives of these men, to us they have become people rather than names and it would be very helpful to receive your thoughts.
3. Search. At the top of the page (but below the header) in the right hand sidebar there is a search box. This box has a very clever search engine behind it and will provide pages on the search you have requested. What isn’t so clever is when you come to more than ten entries. If you scroll to the bottom of the page you will see an arrow and the words ‘older posts’. Click on this and it will take you to the pages 11 to 20 and so on. This obscure set of directions harks back to when the website software (WordPress) was designed for the ‘blogging community’.
4. Header. After the list of letters representing the names of the servicemen, there are the following titles: a. Home Page. This is the first page you come to when arriving at the site. Sometimes the page will change if there is anything topical to tell you, but for the most part it is just an introduction. b.Film Archive. You probably know of ‘Youtube’ and this menu item selects their films about many of the battles our servicemen died in.  For instance, you can watch a film about the Somme and then go to the next menu item, ‘Battles Fought’ to look up who died during the battle. There are about seven who were killed on the first day of the Somme – July 1^st 1916. c. Battles Fought. Having watched the films of some of the battles, you might want to know which of our man were killed in them. Run down the menu and select the battle and click on it. A page comes up which gives you a selection of pages with the battle’s name mentioned in it. Some of the men fought in battles which they survived only to be killed in a late one. So for instance, their battalion may have fought at Loos in 1915, the Somme 1916, but the serviceman fell at Passchendaele in 1917. This selection will provide you with pages where this information is provided. d. Cemeteries. If you wanted to visit the Western Front (we thoroughly recommend you do) you will inevitably come across vast acres dedicated to graves and memorials. The numbers are so large it is hard to grasp any context. This menu item provides you with the chance to visit a cemetery, knowing the names of the Wokingham men who fell. So if you are going to say Thiepval, go to the cemeteries section and you will come across a list of the men who are named there. On each page (at the bottom)there is a ‘PDF’ button which organises the page into a printable item. Print off as many as you want and read their stories. When you arrive at Thiepval find the names and if you can, have your photo taken and send it to us. We will upload it onto the (yet to be devised!) photo gallery. The point here is that the visit to Thiepval (or any of the others) is enriched with the local story of the man (or boy) who ended his life’s journey in the area you are visiting.
5. Sidebar.  On the right hand side of the site is a column with a number of different sections, which emphasises and reorganises different pieces of information. Here is an explanation of each of the sidebar’s sections: Search this site. Drop a word into this box (maybe your street – if it’s 100 years old) and it will give you a list of the pages that word is found on. Wokingham Remembers:  This is a slideshow (in random order)of the photos we have of our fallen servicemen. The faces do not refer to the page you are reading. Jim Bell’s Wokingham Archive: Jim is a well known local historian who has written many short books on past life in Wokingham. Jim specialises in the people of Wokingham and is therefore an ideal partner in the Wokingham Remembers project. Jim’s contribution in his archive is to give us an understanding of Wokingham and acts as a foil for the tragic tale of the area’s Great War experience.    Names – ‘Map of legends’. An on-going mini project which points to the addresses of the Fallen before they died.  It is shocking to see just how many there were from just one street; Havelock Road for instance had seven and Wescott Road lost nine. Comments about the Fallen. Every time someone makes a comment at the bottom of a page (mainly Sarah and me though!) the five most recent appears on the sidebar. I use the comments section for notes about contact we have made with descendants etc, or to flag up certain issues with the relevant record.  Updates on Twitter. If there is a record of particular note, we will send out a tweet. There are some local followers from Wokingham and it’s probably worthwhile attempting to make Wokingham Remembers a part of the local community. Keep everyone remembering !

Information you need to know:

1. Credibility. We must emphasise that the information on this site is open to challenge. If you find your information does not match then please let us know. Conversely, if you have information which corroborates with ours then we would also be grateful for your confirmation. The best way to provide feedback is through the ‘comments section’ at the bottom of each page – this is sent to us for checking. Otherwise, please write to me: mrchurcher@gmail.com or Sarah: huxfordfamily@gmail.com . Sarah did the names from A to L and I did from M to Z. The next point emphasises the need for us to tread carefully though the pages:
2. Context. It is important to understand the methods used in building the original memorial list (around 1920) as it points to the coherence of the information we have collected over the past year. One of the surprising issues we came across when starting this research was the way the original names had been chosen for the Wokingham War Memorial. In our naivety, we thought the names had been collected by the local government or a British Legion type authority. The best information we have at present is from the Town Council’s web site ‘The War Memorial in the Annexe was unveiled in 1924 by Admiral Sir Doveton Sturdee to commemorate Wokingham men who had fallen in the 1914-1918 war. Cllr H C Mylne, Borough Mayor during the war, was responsible for raising funds to build the memorial and purchase buildings for the Memorial Orthopaedic Clinic in Denmark Street. Later the names of those killed in the 1939-1945 were added, as was that of a Wokingham pilot killed during the Falklands War’. Although (we believe) the original records have been lost for Wokingham’s memorial, we know on a national level the names were collected haphazardly. Memorials were the people’s expression of grief and as such did not adhere to any particular method of collection. Therefore the names given in the list, do not come from a particular regiment or even a particular area. Sometimes the serviceman is from Crowthorne, Wokingham, London, or even Canada or Australia. This means that having just a name to work with, there could be dozens of servicemen who died in the war – all with the same name. It doesn’t mean we can’t cross examine the different sources of data, but it does mean we don’t always get it right. However, we decided early on to state where we could our concerns over the information rather than just state it as a fact or even omit altogether. So don’t forget, we have started with only a name; one that could come from anywhere.
3. The choice of website style. Neither Sarah nor I are ‘website builders’, although www.wokinghamremembers.com has been built by us. To say it has been a long learning curve is an understatement ! We chose this style though, because we wanted it to be interactive – for you to have your say and to share in its development. You can for instance add comments – and many already have contributed, I am delighted to say. There is also a twitter account you can follow (wokyremembers) which sends out the occasional bleating – really just a device to let you know we’re still here (to date there’s about 4 followers – but we live in hope!). The main point of the site though is that it should be used – we’re hoping the schools and societies can use the information as a basis for their visits to the Western Front.
4. Sources. Although it was Sarah and I who collected the information, there have been sources used from many dedicated researchers; some known, some unknown. We want to state now how stunning it has been to learn of the numbers of people who have dedicated themselves to building up a picture of this terrifying part of our history. We hope also to become a part of that ethereal ‘team’ and provide you with any help in your own personal journey of discovering what makes the world what it is today and also in some small part, what makes you … you.

 Regards, Mike (site admin)