Information submitted by Lynne Pengelly.
Thomas William Tidyman known as Bill (although this may have only been after he moved to Bradford)
Born 1st November 1896 in Norton, Stockton on Tees the 2nd child, eldest son of John and Mary Tidyman
The 1911 census shows him living and working on a farm in Agglethorpe (possibly Brecongill) with his parents and 6 siblings, his older sister is listed as a diarymaid.
He enlisted on 24th May 1918 at the age of 23 into the 9th battalion of the Yorkshire Regiment and was wounded by a gunshot in his right forearm sometime in September 1918, he was transferred to the Bangour War hospital in Edinburgh and was discharged on 19th June 1919.
Carl at the Green Howard’s museum was able to tell me that my grandad had been a marksman when he saw the badge on his uniform and also explained about the silver war badge given to injured men to wear after they had been discharged as unfit for further war service.
After the war he returned to the farm his father died in 1920 and his mother died in 1927, at sometime he met my grandma who was visiting some friends who had relocated to Coverdale and they were married in Bradford on 7th December 1929.
He was a tenant farmer at Harrop Edge Farm in Allerton Bradford until 1942 and then the family moved to Allerton village and he had a milk round. He worked for the War Ag during World War 2.
He had several other less manual jobs until his retirement in 1961 and died aged 81 in 1979.
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Duncan Harvie
Vicki Walker of Little Crakehall called into the museum to show us a photograph of Duncan Harvie, her grandfather. The photo is a postcard addressed to ‘Mary and Sam’, sent on 3 April 1916 and shows a group of Signallers on board HMS Laconia. Duncan Harvie (5th South African Regiment) is sat at the front of the group with crossed legs. The ship’s log shows the Laconia (an armed merchant cruiser) to be anchored at Zanzibar on that date, on it’s way to British East Africa (now Kenya). The ship was used in the early part of the war to patrol the South Atlantic and the Indian Ocean, but in April 1915 her role changed and she was used as a headquarters ship to aid in the fight in German East Africa. Following her return to to Cunard, the Laconia was sunk by U-50 160 miles northwest of Fastnet while returning form the United States on 25th February 1917. Twelve people were killed following a double torpedo strike.
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2nd Lt J S Purvis
Canon John Purvis OBE (1890-1968) Canon John Purvis was an extremely talented artist and photographer. He is best remembered however for his historical and literary achievements. His translation of the original York Mystery Plays into modern English were central to their revival during the Festival of Britain in 1951. This work, along with his initiation of the Borthwick Institute for Archives in York, lead to his OBE in 1958. Purvis was born in Bridlington 1890. After studying at Cambridge University he worked at Cranleigh School as a history teacher, a role to which he would return after the First World War. He enlisted with the Yorkshire Regiment, serving with the 5th Battalion from early 1916. Purvis was wounded during the Battle of the Somme on the first occasion he went ‘over the top’. On that day, 15th September 1916, he had recorded history’s first tank attack in pen and ink in the early light of dawn. Two well known war poems, ‘High Wood’ and ‘Chance Memory’, originally published under the pseudonym Philip Johns(t)one are now known to have been written by Purvis.
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William McNally VC
William was born on the 16th December 1894 in the village of Murton in County Durham. At 14 he would follow his father down the pit at Mutton Colliery. At the outbreak of war he enlisted on the 3rd September, aged 20, into the Yorkshire Regiment, The Green Howards, and was posted to the 8th (Service) Battalion. The Battalion travelled to France in August 19115 as part of the 69th Brigade, 23rd Division. It was during the Somme offensive in 1916 that William would win his first Military medal, having gone out into no-man’s-land to rescue a wounded officer. The following year during 3rd Ypres, generally known as Passcheandaele, he received a bar to his Military Medal, again recuing men wounded or buried under shellfire. In late 1917 he was part of the detachment of British and French troops sent to the Italian front to bolster the Italians after their disastrous defeat at the Battle of Caparetto. In October of 1918 the allied advance culminated in their victory at the Battle of Vittorio Veneto paving the way for the total defeat of the Austrian Army. It was during this battle that William received the Victoria Cross having put to flight the enemy and capturing a machine gun. William left the Army in February 1919 and returned to life down the pit at Murton Colliery. He married and would father 6 children. In 1940 he joined the Local Defence Volunteers in Murton and the following year served in the Durham Home…