IN MEMORY OF OUR BAXENDEN LADS

1914 - 1918

& 1939 - 1946

Wm. Turner - November 1994

Introduction
Baxenden War Memorial

CUCKNELL, Alan
GIBSON, Edward
KAVANAGH, Wilfred
TAYLOR, Ernest
WINTERBOTTOM, Richard

Links

Accrington Pals
Visit to Serre
The Somme and Vimy
First World War pages

Designed by  M i c r o L o f t

PTE. 15095 JAMES ALBERT BARNES of the Northumberland Fusiliers was killed in action in the early fighting on the Somme battlefields in France on October 4th 1915.

James was born in Accrington and enlisted in Preston in the Northumberland Fusiliers at the outbreak of war in August 1914. He is listed as a former resident of Baxenden in St. John's Roll of Honour published in the Haslingden Gazette in September 1915.

James' body was never found or identified. He is therefore commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing on the Somme. The Memorial is some four miles north-east of the small town of Albert. It stands on a rise overlooking the battlefields. It is in the form of a triumphant arch, and is built of brick with limestone facings. (In the 1980's much of the brick-work in the archways, which are a feature of the Memorial, was replaced by special bricks made in Accrington.) On the stone panels are inscribed the names of over 73,000 men who died on the Somme battlefields between July 1915 and March 1918 and have no known grave. James' name is but one of the 2,931 Northumberland Fusiliers who are so named.