Armistice Day Service 2025

“He left behind a fiancée in Carleton Place, Ontario” ……

Farsley Rehoboth Burial Ground’s Armistice Day Service was held on Tuesday 11th November.

We were joined by Dr Kuldip Kaur Bharj OBE Deputy Lord Lieutenant of West Yorkshire.

The service was officiated by Reverend Nathanael Poole, Vicar of St. John’s Church, Farsley, with Valley View Community Primary School Choir once again singing to our largest audience to date.

Bugler Darren Walker played The Last Post and Reveille

Silk poppies attached to support sticks were placed on all our 24 War and Remembered graves following the service together with Remembrance crosses.

In the early 20th century, many hundreds, and possibly thousands of young textile workers from Farsley, Rodley and the west of Leeds emigrated either as young people on their own, or with their parents. Such was the reputation of this area as a centre of textile expertise that it was possible to obtain a job in many parts of the world and in Australia and Canada in particular.

When in 1914 and 1939 war came many of these emigrants enlisted, many came to fight in Europe and sadly many died.

During World War One of the circa 400,000 Canadians who enlisted 224,000 are described as recent immigrants from Great Britain.

We have nine official war graves in Farsley Rehoboth, seven of them have the familiar white Portland stone headstones, the other two are the resting places of a young Canadian airman, Maurice Fieldhouse and an 18-year-old Australian soldier, Arthur Hainsworth Wade.

Both worked in textiles and both are buried in the family graves of their British relatives.

The service was centred around Arthur’s grave, with a photograph of Arthur on display.

Maurice Fieldhouse already has 98 documents on our online database, but still new details come to our researchers. The night before the service we received, from a relative of Maurice:

“Maurice was a textile designer for Joseph Clan and Co in Bradford when he emigrated to Canada aged 21 in 1936. He enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force in August 1940. Whilst at the controls of a Hawker Hurricane in a low-level flying exercise over Northumberland, England, Maurice’s plane dipped, stalled then crashed, killing him instantly. He left a fiancé, Audrey Morphy, back in Carleton Place, Ontario, Canada.”