Church records

On a recent visit to the archives at Liverpool Central Library I found a few snippets of information about the war memorial and St James Church.

I was disappointed to see that the Records of Services didn't give any details other than a title for the services but they were still interesting.  They showed that, as you would expect, the war was considered daily in church with either 'war intercession' or 'war litany' services/lessons.

The record of collections during services shows that money was collected for a variety of war-related causes including:

Roll of honour fund
St James wounded soldiers and prisoners of war
Blinded soldiers
Wounded soldiers
Sailors
French fund
Belgian fund
Armenian fund

I was also looking for family names connected with the memorial, there weren't any mentioned in the records of services but the Vestry meeting minutes had lists of sidesmen/women for each year (ushers)  and several of them shared surnames with the men on the memorial. for the more uncommon names Tonkies, and Reay we can be fairly sure that they were the same family, for Irvine, Clarke, Owen, Jones and Harker it seems very likely they were relatives but without their christian names recorded it is impossible to be sure.

I was very pleased to find a record of the cost of the memorial, the annual church warden accounts for 1920-1921 show 'St James War Memorial £22-4-11 which would be about £840 today... not quite the £10,000 it's going to cost for a replica!