A Few Words About Us
Ian and Andy looking at local newspaper archives in Keighley Library
The Men of Worth Project researches local people who served the country in wartime. We follow all currently available sources of information that we can find, and use the information in these sources to create a biography about each person for our archive. This is displayed in the form of a time-line of their life and accompanied by photographs if we have them.
We do this simply because we believe their stories should be preserved and told to future generations. We do not support war and we certainly do not celebrate it. A great deal of the people we have researched died defending their position and we simply recognise that and do not judge them.
We are also researching local conscientious objectors (who obviously did not serve) and their treatment, because they were part of our society at the time and we hope anyone examining the reasons for this may find our research on them useful.
Find out how to join us
Men of Worth is actively run by Project Directors Andy Wade and Ian Walkden, along with our other Director Helen Wade, who fulfills a supporting role. Members Carole Hodge, Kat Hyde, Lynn Parker, Jimmy Vaughan, Laura Goodchild and Oliver Robertson help with some of the research and events.
Initially, it began in 2001 with Andy's desire to record all of our local war graves and memorials located in our cemeteries and then looking more directly at researching the details of the men listed on the Oakworth War memorial in Holden Park. This soon developed into a larger need to include men from the village who were not actually listed on the memorial, and for various reasons were named on other local war memorials, often to do with their surviving family members moving elsewhere after the war, so the research naturally expanded into other villages.
We had both been involved with Remembrance for many years, and we agreed it would be apt for us to work more closely together in this Project.
After Ian joined in 2007, it became clear that we would have to define boundaries for the Project and we settled on Keighley and the Worth Valley, and this area is covered by the Bradford postcode districts of BD20, BD21 and BD22. We include Oxenhope in our research because this is an integral part of our local community, although geographically it is not part of the Worth Valley which actually runs along the course of the Worth River past Stanbury and Oldfield to Watersheddles Reservoir at Two Laws.
Laura, Carole and Kat at our Haworth event in 2021, flanked by Andy and Ian.
In 2021 we welcomed three new active members, Laura Goodchild, Carole Hodge and Kat Hyde to the Project and in 2022, they were joined by Jimmy Vaughan, Oliver Robertson and Lynn Parker in 2022. They all live locally and will be undertaking specific research on the local women and some men who served in the Great War period and are recorded in Red Cross index cards. The research will involve looking at the information on the cards and matching this with civil records to create biography profiles. These will then be uploaded to our online blog and used in a dedicated 'Women of Worth' section website and in our displays and exhibitions. They will also look at local Great War and WW2 records for other women who served in these periods of history.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank some people for their inspiration, expert help and assistance with the research work of our project and help with displaying our exhibition material in the library.
Keighley News staff: Richard Parker, Alistair Shand, David Knights, and Miran Rahman for their continued and much appreciated support, and coverage of our work throughout the Great War Centenary period.
Friends: Steven Wood, Eddie Kelly, Loraine Petyt and Sylvia Valentine, for their expert knowledge and guidance in all matters archive and research related.
Ian Dewhirst: Former library staff member at Keighley Reference Library (now Local Studies Library). For his expert knowledge and a lifetime of inspiring work in highlighting local history.
Keighley Local Studies Library: Caroline Brown - Local Studies Development Officer, and Staff Members - Simon Rourke, Gina Birdsall, Janet, Angela and Andrew for their invaluable assistance.
Keighley and District Local History Society, in particular archivists Tim Neal, Steve Bown and Chairperson Joyce Newton and the other committee members for their continued support of our Project.
The Men of Worth Project C.I.C. (Community Interest Company) was registered with Companies House with effect from 24th June 2013. Our Directors are: Andy Wade, Ian Walkden and Helen Wade.
If you have a similar project operating in Keighley and the Worth Valley area (or even nearby) and would like to contribute to, or work with the Men of Worth Project C.I.C, please get in touch.
If you have any information, pictures or documents related to the aims of this project then we'd love to hear from you.
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