• A Roll of Honour may refer to any list of people who are praised officially for something they have done. It more usually refers to a list of names of people who have died in the military or other services. Most places have a military Roll of Honour in some format for the Great War and the 1939-45 War.
• Most families throughout the UK suffered the loss of close family relatives in the Great War of 1914 -18. It appears that barely a family or community across the UK escaped World War I untouched, except that is for the “Thankful Villages”. Losing one family member must have been truly devastating but try to image the grief of the Rissington family in Gloucestershire who lost five sons. The term “Thankful Villages” was first used by the British writer and journalist Arthur Mee in his King’s England, a guide to the counties of England in the 1930s. A Thankful Village was said to be one which lost no men in the Great War as all those who had left to serve ‘King and Country’ came home again. For instance, in Yorkshire East Riding he writes about Catwick, “Thirty men went from Catwick to the Great War and thirty came back, though one left an arm behind.” Incredibly, Arkholme in Lancashire saw 59 of their sons go to war and all returned. It was also suggested that such villages had no war memorials, although some had monuments, usually in the church, in gratitude for their good fortune. Recent and ongoing research has identified 41 parishes throughout England and Wales from which all soldiers returned.
• Further information:
  • Wikipedia - Roll of Honour
  • Roll of Honour
  • Roll of Honour - Britain at War
  • The Long, Long Trail

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