We will remember them

posted by John Winn

Last Saturday I attended a special ceremony at the village church my family attended when I was a young boy. St Andrew's, built circa 1125 in the village of Haughton le Skerne (absorbed in to the Borough of Darlington in 1930) is a fine Norman church, the oldest in Darlington, and the occasion that prompted my visit had been arranged by the local history society to commemorate the 18 men of the village who were killed in the first World War and whose names are on the war memorial at the church gates and on a plaque inside the church.

Amongst the fallen was an older brother of my father, Reginald Anthony Winn, who was killed at the Battle of Flers-Courcelette in September 1916 and his name is at the head of  the family gravestone in a quiet corner of the church yard. The small cross was placed there by the history society. I have made a note for my next visit to take some gardening tools with which to tackle the ivy.

 

If you are  wondering what  the relevance of this is to a cricket blog the answer lies in an email I received from Carol Atkinson, the seemingly tireless secretary of the society who has spent many hours researching the backgrounds of the village casualties and in so doing unearthed an article from The Evening  Despatch* of 1915 reporting the death of Sgt G E White (DLI). The article quotes from a letter written by Bob Bamlett, a Haughton boy, to his parents in which he describes the events leading up to White's death from a sniper's bullet. In the same trench with the letter writer and the unfortunate Sergeant was Uncle Reg, three lads from the same small village in County Durham.

The Evening Despatch concludes its article with the following 'It may be recalled that Sergt White for many years was a member of Haughton Cricket Club, and in 1909 he won the bowling prize taking 24 wickets at a cost of 1.75 runs per wicket which was a very creditable performance. Later he became connected with the Railway Athlete(sic) Club for whom he was always a good scorer. He was also secretary of the Haughton Hockey Club for a memorable number of years.'

I assume the Railway Athlete Club is a reference to Darlington RA and that 'a good scorer' is a reference to his skill with the bat rather than the pencil.

  What puzzles me about this is that I have three photographs of the village team from that era, 1906, 1907 and 1912, on none of which does George White appear. Below is a picture of the 1912 team by which time he may have moved to the RA's predecessors, Darlington North Road
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Whether Uncle Reg was a cricketer is not known but given that his father (my grandfather) and at least two of his brothers were good players it seems very unlikely that he would not have played. The local press of that time did print scores of some of Haughton's matches and a search may throw up information about Uncle Reg and Sergeant White. A railwayman by trade, White's death is also listed on a memorial to the several Darlington men from that industry killed in the war.

I had lunch yesterday with Brian Sanderson, David Thorpe and Tony Hutton, 'Jim the Thoroughbred' as David described the meeting, and cricket dominated the conversation. The light at the end of the November tunnel is the publication of the first class fixtures, on or about the 25th it is thought, but Tony has discovered that some of the Minor Counties have rather jumped the gun and their fixtures are available on their websites. Amongst these are Cheshire who have published dates but as yet without venues.

*a former sister paper of The Northern Echo known also as The Northern Despatch