This part of the Friends’ School website
contains the History Department’s Great
War Archive. It consists of a number of photographs
e.g. of memorials and cemeteries, a selection
of letters, a series of articles and a diary relating
to Ulster men and women who were affected by the
war. Copies of all of these can be downloaded.
However, the central feature of the archive
is a database and casualty list of those from
the Lisburn area who died in the War. The two
contain essentially the same information only
in different formats. There are over 900 entries
with details of where these people came from,
the units they served in, where and when they
died and where they are buried or commemorated.
In addition there are a series of tasks for pupils
to complete. The database can be interrogated
using the online search facility while the casualty
list can be downloaded as a Word document and
searched using the Find command on the Edit menu.
Compiling the information contained in these
documents has been a long drawn out process. It
began in the mid 1980's and is ongoing. While
the results are presented here as an educational
resource, its primary purpose has always been
more straightforward - simply to tell a little
about local people whose lives were touched by
the Great War. People whose existence has been
largely forgotten, people who were part of our
community but were also part of a tragedy played
out on an international stage. This is ultimately
an act of commemoration.
Pat Geary, History Department, Friends' School,
Lisburn. |