Tipton - Yateley in the Great War

Yateley and surrounding civil parishes, names and boundaries in the First World War. Note that the M3 and some major roads have been added for locational purposes to assist the modern reader.

Denotes parish boundaries in the First World War.

From its formation in 1981, the Yateley Society has created exhibitions on themes of local history, planning matters and ecological topics. A cumulative understanding has been built up over the years of the environmental and social forces which have shaped the community over the past 500 years. In 2014, for the centenary of the outbreak of the Great War, the Society staged an exhibition in the local library. It had taken the best part of two years research to shape this exhibition, which focussed only on 1914. The original plan was to continue the sequence in each centenary year of the Great War.

Having started researching 1915, we quickly realized that a book could impart much more of what we were discovering to a much wider audience. The Yateley Society is a registered charity whose area of benefit is the Civil Parish of Yateley. We set out to discover how the First World War village coped with the traumas and exigencies of war, and how the consequences of war began to shape the town we live in today. We therefore approached Pen & Sword with the idea that Yateley, a town today but in the Great War a village of fewer than 500 houses, might fit into their new Towns & Cities in the Great War series.

With a contract, a new target and a deadline, the project team expanded and met monthly to discuss progress with research, and to determine the content of the book. As a civic trust, our focus would be on the home front. The Societys Chairman was adamant throughout that the research was being carried out for its own sake, whether it was included in the book or not: all would be archived for future use. Graham Fleuty, one of our team, had already published Yateley Men at War, Heartbeats of Remembrance . Having visited all the battlefields on the Western Front, Graham tells the story of each man remembered on Yateley War Memorial, their military backgrounds and the circumstances in which each met his untimely death. Readers wanting military history should consult his book along with this one.

Members of the team chose their research topics. Muriel Brent chose the village school which she had attended in the 1930s. She was ably assisted by Graham Sargent. Philip Todd researched the Red Cross hospitals, because one ward of the Yateley hospital was actually in Eversley. Charles Weager had researched Belgian refugees for the 2014 exhibition, and then went on to research the village as a military training area under Aldershot Command. He has also hand-drawn our maps based on the 1910 Land Tax Assessment. Jerry Camp decided to research the food chain: from the local shops, pubs and farms, to the local allotments and rationing. Roger Coombes and Alan Stuckey looked at the Town Councils records, while the late Ken Walters extended his previous research on the Baptist communities in Yateley. Based on her oral history research, Valerie Kerslake wrote an article describing the character of the village before, during and after the First World War.

Other members of the team contributed essential information we needed. Chris Willis transcribed the 1914 and Spring 1919 electoral registers, and created an interactive map from the 1910 Land Tax assessments previously transcribed by Richard Johnston. Barry Moody transcribed the 1911 census, as well as researching our many naval men. Although there appear to be few descendants still living in Yateley whose families lived here during the Great War, both Chris Bunch and Robin Strange could tell us about their fathers. Chris has a particularly extensive collection of documents and photographs.

The Society has to thank all those who have willingly allowed us to use as illustrations their postcard collections, photographs and documents. The core of the Societys image library was amassed by the late Sydney Loader, one of the Societys first Vice Presidents, and then Jean McIlwaine significantly added to it when she was Church Archivist. Gordon Harland, Richard Johnston, Malcolm Miller, Philip Todd and George Trevis have private postcard collections. We must particularly thank all those family historians around the world who have contacted us, and continue to contact us. We acknowledge their specific contributions in our bibliography.

Peter Tipton had created the Yateley Community on Lives of the Great War , the Imperial War Museums permanent digital memorial to all those throughout the old Empire who were involved in the First World War. His aim was to connect all the military and civil records of each man and woman from Yateley who served in uniform during the war to their Life Story page on the IWM website. He has already identified over 500 persons. With such a wealth of information, Peter volunteered to pull the whole story together and write the text for the book.

All proceeds and commissions which would normally be due to the author will accrue to the Yateley Society, registered charity no.282397.