NEW MEMBER

[warcorrespondent]

Hi everyone. I am very glad I discovered your forum this morning. I have been photographing graves and cemeteries for several decades and since retiring from the Service Personnel & Veterans Agency in 2014 I have been photographing Lancashire [and Manchester] burial grounds. On my Twitter account, I sum myself up as 'I'm a longtime student of funerary architecture who photographs headstones and memorials that tell a story - Our Social History is written on those stones.' I am known as 'The Graveyard Detective' and, most recently, 'Grave Photographer'. I blog extensively and post on the subject across Social Media. Most recently, I blogged about three Second World War casualties who are buried in Blackley Jewish Cemetery - a barrage balloon operator killed in the London Blitz 1940, a nursing Sister at the Jewish Home of Rest in London who was killed in 1944 when a V1 landed on the Nurses Home and a Lancaster crewman who died of injuries received when it crashed just short of the airfield - the aircraft had lost most of it's tail when it was bombed by another Lancaster flying above it.
Normally, I walk for four hours round a cemetery or churchyard reading the headstones, looking for interesting inscriptions and always photograph any military related grave I see. Over the last six weeks, I have made many visits to Manchester and Greater Manchester cemeteries and the past week or so have been concentrating on Oldham. When I previously visited Manchester General Cemetery, I came across mention on a memorial to LCpl Alfred Haynes who was one of the 3rd (Special Reserve) Bn, Manchester Regiment killed by the Zeppelin bomb in Cleethorpes. I was reminded of this when I was photographing Hollinwood Cemetery on Bank Holiday Monday as I found a mention of a second casualty [Pte John Corfield] - evidently, 13 of those killed came from Oldham.
Right. I apologise for wittering on     Oh, and indication of the scale of my photo-taking is that I have  107,000 images on my laptop [and external hard drives] from the last two years of wandering and I have made a point of photographing every Manchester Regiment headstone that I have come across.
Thanks
Laurence

[timberman]

Hi Laurence
Welcome to the forum and thank you for posting the photos.

We have a main site that lists all the items covered just follow the link.

http://www.themanchesters.org/indexold.html

Also we have a flickr site covering all the war grave headstones
we have just follow the link.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/manchester-regiment/

It is a work in progress and we are grateful for any photos that we don't have.

Thanks again

Timberman

[warcorrespondent]

Thanks, Timberman. I'll check out the links.

I'll check out all the names on the Urmston Jewish war memorial. Unusually, it only names those killed in France. It doesn't mention regiments or corps for the soldiers named so I'll see what the CWGC has for them. Maybe one or two of them have served with Manchester Regiment?