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Local Heroes - Your streets were their streets Local Heroes - Your streets were their streets

The names of 197 local men who lost their lives in World War I are
inscribed on the bells of the Memorial Community Church in Plaistow. They are our local heroes

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About the heroes

The Local Heroes website has one page of information, a ‘profile’, for each name that is cast on to the memorial bells.  You can search for men by name or other characteristic, such as regiment or where they were from. However some pages have much more information than others, and some very little at all – there are a number of fallen soldiers we have not been able to identify. If you can help, please do get in touch using the comments form or email – we would very much like all of these men to be remembered.

The names on the Memorial Bells were recorded when they were taken down for restoration.

We have put an ‘error message’ on profiles where the information is incomplete or unclear. In some cases, we have the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) database details of the man, but no further details or photographs.

But many of the names on the bells do not have a match in the CWGC records of those killed serving in the First World War, and so far we have not found out who they were. As you will see, the names on bells consist of rank, initial and surname only and we think there must be a number of mistakes.

Some will be spelling mistakes: “Private V E Zinecraft” was actually “Private V E Zincraft”.

Some may be the initals of the name the man was known by, rather than the ones on his birth certificate – a middle name or a nickname.

If you think you can identify one of these men, please let us know and we will be delighted to update the website.

Thanks to  Hilary Colston, Stephen and Karen Dennis of the Western Front Association, and Paul Darran for their research that has identified so many men and started to tell their stories.

If you are trying to find out more about a member of your family who fell in the First World War, these websites might be  useful:

http://www.greatwar.co.uk/research/family-history/tracing-ww1-family-history.htm

http://www.1914-1918.net/