British Army shames local council by tidying up historic Blackburn ... http://t.co/3edwuZUW
Back in early July I posted on the shamefully neglected grave of a Victoria Cross winner grave in Blackburn, Lancashire. On that occasion it was Blackburn stonemason Brent Stevenson and his workers who rode to the rescue rather than the useless Blackburn with Darwen Council. Nearly 4 months later, the state of Blackburn Old Cemetery which contains more than 300 war graves, plus a host of others of historical importance hasn t improved.In desperation, local community group Friends of Blackburn Old Cemetery called on the British Army and other volunteers to do the council s work for them; 30 troops from regiments based in North West England responded to the call and this week helped to tackle the rampaging shrubs and thick undergrowth clogging the graves and pathways at the Whalley New Road site. One of the Friends, Robin Duxbury, told Granada Reports, It looked desolate. The more attention we can focus on it, the more people know about it, the more I hope people want to do something about it.One of the Army officers in charge of the clear-up detachment said, I came down for a recce prior to today with the people who are organising this and I couldn t believe the state of it. Some graves have been completely hidden for years. Whether they re war graves or just normal graves, they shouldn t be left like that.Blackburn Giant Frederick Kempster As well as being the final resting place of Boer War VC winner Private James Pitts, other famous residents of Blackburn Old Cemetery include the Blackburn Giant Frederick Kempster, who at 7ft 9in was one of Britain s tallest ever men. London-born Kempster was in Blackburn with his travelling show in 1918 when he fell victim to the flu pandemic and died in Queen s Park Hospital. It took 14 men to lower his 9 ft coffin into his 10 ft grave.Countless other overgrown graves represent people whose lives also deserve to be remembered, such as the First World War grave of Private James Foley of the Loyal North Lancashire Regiment. In a 4 year conflict which averaged around 6,500 soldiers killed every single day, the only unusual aspect of Pte Foley s death is that it occurred while he was at home in Blackburn rather than on the Western Front. James Foley had volunteered for service on 5 Aug 1914, the day after the war had been declared.Because of a previous stint of military service he found himself in France within weeks, serving with the British Expeditionary Force sent out to check the German advance. Foley was wounded in the First Battle of Ypres, which virtually wiped out the old regular British Army and saw the digging-in of the trench system which would characterise the Western Front for the whole war. The grave of Pte James Foley However, it wasn t Foley s wounds (which were superficial) that did for him.An attack of severe abdominal pain at the end of November 1914 saw him hospitalised in Boulogne, then sent back to England. He was eventually diagnosed with cancer of the bladder and died at home in Almond St, Blackburn on 14 Feb 1915 aged 22, leaving a wife and baby daughter. His grave now lies in a forgotten corner of the cemetery surrounded by foot-high grass.A representative of Blackburn Council, whose Chief Executive incidentally earns more than both the British Prime Minister and the 4* head of the British Army, said, The council have done a lot of work in this cemetery, and we ve all spent a lot of time working with the community group, but we can t do everything. It s impossible to do all of these graves because there are thousands of them. Nevertheless, the Blackburn with Darwen Council website is happy to boast that it manages and maintains all of the facilities in the cemetery, including grounds maintenance.Furthermore, it receives funding from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission to tend those 300-odd plots, like Pte Foley s, designated as war graves.As ever, you can rely on the NCO cadre to ask the pointed questions.A corporal on the clean-up team a modern day descendant of the British Tommy asked, If British war graves overseas in Germany, even Iraq, can get looked after, why can t we do it on our own doorstep?, Back in early July I posted on the shamefully neglected grave of a Victoria Cross winner grave in Blackburn, Lancashire. On that occasion it was Blackburn stonemason Brent Stevenson and his workers who rode to the rescue rather than the useless Blackburn with Darwen Council. Nearly 4 months later, the state of Blackburn Old Cemetery which contains more than 300 war graves, plus a host of others of historical importance hasn t improved.In desperation, local community group Friends of Blackburn Old Cemetery called on the British Army and other volunteers to do the council s work for them; 30 troops from regiments based in North West England responded to the call and this week helped to tackle the rampaging shrubs and thick undergrowth clogging the graves and pathways at the Whalley New Road site. One of the Friends, Robin Duxbury, told Granada Reports, It looked desolate. The m ...
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