How many war graves are there in Huddersfield?
The question for #AskExaminer this week has been posed by a reader who wants to know more about burial plots and memorials in tribute to Britain’s war dead.
It’s difficult to know the exact number, as some of the fallen are remembered on countless family memorial stones which are in graveyards in all corners of the town.
But it is possible to look up the number of war graves on the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website – www.cwgc.org – which has a database containing information about 23,000 cemeteries, memorials and other locations worldwide where Commonwealth casualties from the two world wars are rememembered.
A search under ‘Huddersfield’ brings up around 100 cemeteries in and around the town, including locations in Brighouse, Elland, Mirfield, Holmfirth.
Some, like Edgerton Cemetery, remember a large number of casualties (164 in Edgerton, including 71 burials of the Second World War), while many others commemorate a handful of casualties or even just one or two.
Those familiar with Edgerton Cemetery may know it contains the grave of Victoria Cross holder Harry Coverdale who survived the First World War and died in 1955. Sgt Coverdale, who won his VC at Passchendaele in 1917, shares a headstone with his wife, Clara, who died in 1940.
His VC was awarded after he killed three German snipers, then rushed two machine-guns, killing or wounding the teams. Later he went out again with five men to capture a gun position, but when he saw a considerable number of the enemy advancing, withdrew his detachment man by man, he himself being the last to retire.
At Lockwood Cemetery there is the final resting place of another VC recipient, Private Ernest Sykes, who also survived the Great War. He was handed his bravery medal in Arras, France in April 1917 for saving the lives of badly-wounded colleagues. He lived in Lockwood and died in August 1949.
A total of 36 casualties are commemorated in Lockwood Cemetery, with a wide range of ages and ranks, among them Sgt Harry Webster, of the Home Guard, who died in 1940 aged 54, and Private Brian Butterworth of the Duke of Wellington’s (West Riding Regiment) who was 19 when he died in October 1940.
Over in Salendine Nook Baptist Chapelyard there are eight Commonwealth War Graves. One family gravestone remembers Geoffrey Norman Gaunt, a Spitfire pilot with 609 Squadron who was shot down and killed during an attack on German bombers over London on September 14 1940. Gaunt, who was 24, was from a well-known textile family and was a cousin of Huddersfield-born actor James Mason.
