Meet the authors of this new book at St Mary's Church

340 men who died during the First World War are listed on the Roll of Honour in St Mary’s Church, Putney. This book, based on an original blog* by Maggie Jones, provides information about each of those who died, including, where possible, where they lived in Putney, their families, their regiment and battalion and their place of death and burial.

It links the soldiers who died in battles such as the Somme to families in Putney and to houses which in most cases can still be seen today. Many departed, never to return, for the confines of the trenches, from little houses in cramped streets, some long demolished, but identified in the text and shown on Ordnance Survey maps.

During the war the YMCA organised recreation centres in the principal army bases in France. Abbeville, the town on the mouth of the Somme was one of these. Walter J Morrison, Hon. Secretary of St Mary's Memorial Fundraising Committee went out to work with them and at the end of the war, brought back from the chapel, a wooden cross, kept at St Mary’s to this day.

The book tells how, from 1920-1921, St Mary's organised fundraising to produce the Roll of Honour, which is mounted inside the church, and the war memorial, now in Church Square, as well as a number of other memorial events including peals of bells and flower-laying by children.

A list of the 100 or so war cemeteries pinpoints where the Putney dead are buried throughout the world. Maps, details and photographs of other local war memorials are also included.

* maggiesadventuresinlondon.blogspot.co.uk/2016

October 13, 2017