From the Thorley Archives
We Will Remember Them
November is the month when we pay our respects to those servicemen and women who have served their country and especially we remember those who gave their lives in armed conflicts.
At St. James the Great, Thorley we have two tangible reminders of those servicemen who died in two World Wars. On the north nave wall in the church there are two memorials commemorating the names of those who made the sacrifice. 20 Thorley men are listed for the First World War and then two men George Reedman and Percy South died in the Second World War.
In our church archives is a hand-written account written in 1919 by the Rector, Canon J.E.I. Procter, detailing all those men who went from Thorley to take part in the 1914-1918 conflict. It is a fascinating insight into the social history of the village at the time, containing as it does so many personal details. Each of the 103 servicemen has a page to himself with a record of where he lived, what his pre war employment was, which regiment he joined, where he saw action and what happened to him - wounded, gassed, hospitalised, died in action or of his wounds. Often there is a transcript of the
letter that the senior officer wrote to the next of kin telling of the circumstances of the soldier's death.
However the majority of Thorley's servicemen survived to return home. The Rector obviously felt deeply responsible for these parishioners, as he not only commissioned a temporary wooden memorial (which Reg Jacobs has recently relocated in the church room) but also the permanent stone memorial, shown opposite, listing those who gave their lives with the dates on which they died. Named on either side are those who served in the war and were fortunate enough to return to their families in Thorley.
Amongst the many names that we can associate with families in Thorley and Bishop's Stortford today are Bird, Brewster, Chappell, Clark, Gee, Griggs, Harris, Hayter, Newman, Pegrum, Prior, Saban, Sampford, Stock and Trigg.
I have extracted these unedited highlights from Canon Procter's notebook of just four servicemen to give a representative flavour of the personal details that the Rector collected and recorded after the war.
Whilst compiling this account I was contacted by Geoffrey Harris who offered me the accompanying photographs that he had located at the County Record Office in Hertford.
Bill Hardy
