We were awarded funding by the National Lottery's Heritage Fund in early 2024 and this has been supported with funding from Keighley Town Council.
Our proposal was to add more names to the Borough of Keighley Roll of Honour and to celebrate the centenary year of the original book and our wonderful Borough of Keighley War Memorial, which was unveiled in Keighley's Town Hall Square on 7th December 1924, attended by several thousand people.

Events:

Our centenary flyer for September, October and November 2024.

Here are the details of Centenary events which are coming up or are already in progress. We show the times where they are known but some have yet to be finalised.
We are proud to be supporting Keighley Town Council with the commemoration of Keighley's War Memorial and Roll of Honour in 2024, the Centenary year.
Here is our flyer which can be downloaded as an image to your device:

Exhibition:

From 21st September 2024 an exhibition is on display upstairs in Keighley Library Local Studies and Archives Room, until 5th December 2024.
This tells the story of the War Memorial and Roll of Honour books and all of the biographies of the new names being added to our roll of honour.

Roll of Honour signing:

Signing ceremony to accept the 103 new names in the Roll of Honour Supplementary Volume.
This will be a short event upstairs in Keighley Library with the Mayor (or Deputy Mayor,) Keighley Town Clerk and a representative from the Men of Worth Project and one from Keighley Library. We hope to complete the signing before the end of October.
[Date and time to be finalised once the book has been returned after the names gave been added.]

Ceremony of unveiling:

On Saturday 9th November the Book with it's new names will be unveiled by The Keighley Mayor (or Deputy Mayor) and a relative of one of the new names. This will complete the work to add the names to the Borough of Keighley 1914 - 1918 Roll of Honour.
We will start with guests and visitors arriving at 10:00 am.
10:30 am:
The ceremony will begin with a short introduction.
The new names will be unveiled in the book by removing a cover from the cabinet.
The Last Post will be played and we will hold a one minute silence for the Fallen of World War One.
Prayers and thanks will be said.
The ceremony ends at around 11.00 am.
Speeches and comments will be invited at this point.

11:15 pm
Irene Lofthouse will portray the life of QMAAC Worker Frances Hildred Mitchell, who is now named on the Keighley roll of honour as the only woman from Keighley who died as a result of her service in the Great War. (Approximate time one hour)

12:15 pm
Andy Wade will give a short talk of 30 minutes about the research work to add the new names to The Roll of Honour.

This event closes at 12:45 pm, to give time to vacate the room as the Local Studies and archives room is closed for lunch between 1:00 pm and 2:00 pm.

Centenary of Keighley War Memorial

On 7th December 2024 Keighley Town Council will hold an event to commemorate the Centenary of our Roll of Honour at Keighley War Memorial.
(Details to follow)
The Men of Worth Project will be supporting this event.

The Borough of Keighley Great War roll of honour.

Keighley's Great War Roll of Honour book and Supplementary Volume at Keighley Library.

New names discovered from research:

The Men of Worth Project's research over the past 23 years has given us a unique insight into the people of Keighley who fell in the war and we have found over 100 names of local people who served and died in the Great War, who are not named in the Borough of Keighley Great War roll of honour.
In December 2023 we applied to the National Lottery Heritage Fund for a grant to pay for research and digital outputs etc., to highlight the many names we have found who are missing from the roll of honour. Here we will tell the stories of how the original roll of names was created and those who undertook the work, plus examples of more names being added from time to time and how that was accomplished.

Follow us on Facebook, Twitter or Bluesky for up to date posts on what's knew! We post links to all our blog entries on there, so you get to see them as soon as they appear!

The grant process:

We will research the stories of the candidates we've found and publish them on here. They will be reviewed by a group of local people who form the peer review panel.
These people are not directly connected with the Men of Worth Project, and they will make the decisions about who gets to be added using a simple voting system, the results of which will be anonymised before publication. This brings an inclusivity to the process. We will also promote the work on social media and invite comments from interested parties to give further credence to the decisions. Our project's role is just to put forward candidates and allow other local people to decide which ones we add.

Candidates List for the 2024 Centenary of the Borough of Keighley roll of honour

As each biography is posted, we include a link from their name on that page, to their biography page on our blog.
You can make comments on the biography page (these will all be vetted first to eliminate junk mail and offensive remarks.)
These names will eventually be submitted to a professional company who will write the new names into the Supplementary Volume along with any alterations to the spine and pages.

An exhibition in Keighley Library beginning in September will display the candidate’s biographies to the public over a period of weeks.
The end of our exhibition will coincide with an event welcoming the public to witness the unveiling of our updated roll of honour, with a special presentation by a local historical artist who will portray the life story one of the new names.
Our digital output will also be printed in a book, a copy of which will be given to every school in the Keighley district, along with a digital copy so they can view it their school computers.

These stories of our history are explained by here by a selection of guest bloggers who will publish over the next weeks and months. We begin with Steve Hunnisett, a battlefield guide and historian who leads tours around London looking at the history and the evidence of the WW2 blitz. He talks about the influence of Edward Johnston:

Steve Hunnisett tells the story of Edward Johnston

Over the years since the creation of the original roll of honour, several additions have been made and we have asked Angela Speight, librarian and archivist at Keighley Library to explain the process. She has used some unique archive material which rarely sees the light of day, to write about the changes made over the years to Keighley's Great War roll of honour:

Angela Speight - Keighley's Roll of Honour

Librarian and Archivist Gina Birdsall tells us all about the unique and significant war records held at Keighley Library and how they can be accessed by members of the public:

Gina Birdsall - Keighley Library - World War archives

Local historian Eddie Kelly tells the story of the initial efforts to create a war memorial in Keighley and the process by which this was done, leaving us with a spectacular tribute to the men and women from Keighley who died in the Great War:

Eddie Kelly - Keighley's War Memorial

Please keep coming back and following our dedicated posts on social media to read the next chapter in the story of our roll of honour. There will be more guests posting on our blog!