Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Those Who Didn't Come Home from Your Street
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
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A whole generation? It was way much more than that. Britain lost its empire. The Lost gardens of Heligan lost all their gardeners and so became "lost". I still don't think there's been a recovery. Thank god for nuclear weapons eh?
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Permalink Reply by Liz on
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Britain’s empire really collapsed post WW2 but the impact of the fall of the Ottoman Empire and British involvement in the carve up, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire is still reverberating in the Middle East today and the Balkans at the end of 20C. The fall of the Tsar changed Russia (arguably had they not been involved in war the Bolsheviks would have made no headway) and the disappearance of many Royal heads of state provoked revolution across Europe which saw the rise of Hitler, Franco and Mussolini (whose odious tentacles still reach through modern politics in their respective countries and beyond). 100 years is no time in history and we’re living with the consequences today of late 19C politics.
It must be remembered that those young men didn’t view that war as pointless - they went to save Belgium or as the Great Adventure. It was only later that disillusionment set in but by then the Allied forces were a powerful fighting force.
Much of our understanding of the war is through the prism of the 60s and the grand children of those who came back. From “Oh What a Lovely War” to Blackadder to Clark’s entirely made up “Lions led by donkeys.” Perversely the war also precipitated other things such as female emancipation, the end of the servant class as working class people refused to return to a life of drudgery serving the upper classes and huge advances in technology (for good or ill).
The Great War didnt end in 1918, maybe not even in 1945. Its effects are still with us in 2018
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Permalink Reply by Old-Age-Emporium(OAE) on
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"Britain lost its empire." Well, John, England, France, Belgium and Germany certainly lost theirs, some immediately, some piecemeal, others rather slowly over the next half-century. A consummation devoutly to be wished, as Hamlet said. Poor England, alas, never got over it. The loss blighted her entry, reluctant 45-year sojourn, and now blind and fumbling exit from the only international body that ever gave her pathetic insularity some smidgen of morality and meaning. Not a Brexit, really, more an Anglexit - but unfortunately she's still finding crude entrenching tools to dig her final trench through my ancestors' fields along the Armagh-Monaghan county boundary - yes the 'Hard Border' that was always soft before England thought she might start an Empire where the sun would never set. And then they blame their first cousin, the Kaiser, for the century-old mess.
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Permalink Reply by NickM on
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Blimey, we're now living at the house on Allison Road one of these poor blokes lived at. Brings it home very literally.
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Interesting link, thanks Hugh.
The Keir family who lived on my road lost 3 sons between 1916 and 1918.
Just to clarify, the addresses provided in the link aren't necessarily where the servicemen were living at the time of their enrolment or deaths but may be the address of their next of kin.
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Permalink Reply by Bethany Burrow Atherton on
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If you want to follow up on your "house ancestors", you might find more about them on my Harringay Remembers site - they will be on there somewhere if their relatives decided to have them included on either the Roll of Honour (those who went to war but weren't conscripted, regardless of whether they came back or not) or the War Memorial (all who went to war and died, regardless of whether they were conscripted or volunteered) at St Paul's Harringay.There is, as a bare minimum, a short In Memoriam post about each man who died (and was on the memorial) in the blog section, but there is more about some of them than others - it's a work in progress.
I'm currently writing a book on the people of St Paul's Harringay in the First World War (an extended version of the site), so watch this space for news on that.
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Thanks for the reminder about your site Bethany and good luck with the book.
Just to add to my pp: the Keirs had six children, one daughter and 5 younger sons. It was their three youngest boys (2 of whom were twins) who never came home.
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OMG! had no idea there were so many. It is shocking and humbling. I wonder what the impact was on the people of Harringay, with so many men, fathers, brothers, sons,, neighbours and friends missing. Must have been a whole community grieving.
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A little over 20 years later it happened again. My maternal grandfather managed to fight in both world wars.
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