On 5th September 1897, within four weeks of his birth, James Nerney was baptised into St James the Less church by the parish priest, Fr Peter Klein. Just six months later, on 6th March 1898, Fr Klein baptised Thomas Regan, two weeks after his birth. It is almost certain that the two families knew each [...]
Albert Hunt, the grand-father of our parishioner David Pilling, was a ‘Bury lad’. One of four children, after leaving school Albert quickly progressed from being a grocer’s assistant to grocery shop manager and in 1909 married Margaret (Maggie). In early 1917, at the age of 30 and with two young daughters, Albert was called up [...]
William Manning was born on 13th January 1896, one of seventeen children to Michael and Annie, both of whom had settled in the town from Ireland some twenty years earlier. They, like many from Ireland in the post-famine years, came and found work in what were busy, labour intensive, local industries. At the time of [...]
In the 25th August 1917 edition of the Rossendale Free Press, John and Mary Lord, of 41, York Street, Crawshawbooth, wrote a short poem to the second of their six sons to be killed in action in France, along with a prayer to God, for them both to rest in peace: ‘He sleeps beside his [...]
At 19 years of age, William Cowell is one of the youngest of the 25 parishioners killed in the war. His military service lasted for little more than 8 months and like many young men, he was killed in his first encounter with the enemy on the Western Front battlefields. William Cowell, born on 8th [...]
John James Ashworth, the oldest child of St James the Less parishioners John Ormerod and Mary Ashworth, was born at the family home in Double Street, Rawtenstall on 29th July 1891. John Ormerod was a Rawtenstall man, born and bred, but Mary, like many parishioners at that time, had settled in the area from County [...]
Thomas William O’Brien, uncle of Tom Smith, currently St James the Less church’s oldest parishioner and himself a veteran of the Second World War, was the second child of Thomas William and Sarah O’Brien. Born on 27th March 1890 and baptised little more than a week later, on 6th April, at St James the Less, [...]
