James McConnell Wins Bid to the AHRC-funded WWI Living Legacies Centre

Congratulations to James McConnell for his successful bid to the AHRC-funded WWI Living Legacies Centre. James describes the project below.

WWI poster, courtesy of the
Library of Congress. London:
Johnson, Riddle & Co., Ltd., 1915.

In mobilising ‘citizen historians’, this project will work with community partners such as the Northumbria First World War Commemoration project (NWW1), a path-breaking, multiple Heritage Lottery Fund-supported group, which has pioneered the use of grassroots-led research methods, combining these with cutting-edge IT, to produce community-led research on the men from the former borough of Tynemouth who fell during the conflict. ‘Citizen history’ is a relatively new concept in which professional historians work alongside volunteers from a range of backgrounds, often online, to collect and analyse data in relation to particular topics. For a well-known example of ‘citizen history’, click here.

In the case of this project, we’ll be looking to recruit volunteers to research the lives and wartime service of ‘Geordies’ in the armies of Australia, New Zealand, and Canada during World War One. By ‘crowdsourcing’ research in this collaborative way, the project will collect information that will help us to understand why ‘Geordies’ emigrated and how these journey relate to their wartime movements and even post-war locations of settlement.

The project will consider not only the complexities of individual ‘migration histories’ but also the way that individuals and communities saw their identities (as ‘Geordies’ and Britons, but also Australians, Canadians, or New Zealanders); how they understood ‘Geordie’ migration more generally, and how people came to see the empire in new ways through this migration. By using the term ‘Geordie’, we’re aware that the name is often used to describe the people of Newcastle, but it has been used by scholars to describe the people of the wider north east region  as well. In seeking to find volunteers across the world who will help the project research the lives of these soldiers, we’re using the term because it’s internationally recognisable.

The Newcastle YMCA First World War Memorial at Northumbria University

James McConnel

The Newcastle YMCA war memorial.

In late 2014, the Estates Office at Northumbria University contacted me about an interesting discovery they had made in a storage area in the University’s Wynne Jones building. Following my research into the war-related features of Trinity Building (formerly Trinity Presbyterian church), they knew I was interested in information about any war memorials on campus. It turned out that staff from Estates had discovered in Wynne Jones a hitherto unknown First World War memorial. The memorial was accompanied by a brass plaque commemorating the opening of the Newcastle YMCA building on Blackett Street in 1900. This building was knocked down in the 1970s to make way for the Eldon Square shopping centre. Various architectural features of the Victorian building were salvaged when it was demolished. These included stone carvings and door surrounds, which were mounted onto one of the exterior walls on Prudhoe Chare in 1976 (the alley by the side of Marks and Spenercs). But it appears that the YMCA’s war memorial was also rescued from the old building, which was then transferred to the Association’s new premises on Ellison Place. The University acquired this building twenty years later in the 1990s and – seemingly without realising it – also inherited the YMCA’s war memorial.

The memorial is made of wood and includes the names of about 100 men who ‘Gave Their All’ in the First World War. Three Northumbria history students are now researching the names of the men as part of a work placement module all students undertake in their second year. With the help of a
Masters student who is undertaking a project on war memorials in Newcastle schools, they have been introduced to the use of digitised local newspapers, the 1911 census, CWGC records, and military archives, in order to research the lives of those named on the memorial. We have also made contact with the modern-day YMCA in Newcastle and it is interested in collaborating with Northumbria on this project, with some of the young people from the Association helping with elements of the research . Ultimately, the hope is that the biographical information collected will contribute to a permanent online resource about Newcastle YMCA’s role in the First World War.

A Great War Memorial at Northumbria University

James McConnel

Although Northumbria did not exist as an institution during the Great War, the University has a number of interesting connections with the period 1914–1918. The official history of Northumbria (by Joan Allen) records that one of the University’s predecessor institutions, Rutherford Technical College (established in 1880), was indirectly affected by the conflict: the College’s enrolments fell away in 1914, while the institution’s curriculum suffered as a result of various staff members joining (or in some cases re-joining) the colours. New students, however, subsequently enrolled at the college for the purposes of training in Newcastle’s munitions’ factories, while another aspect of the College’s curriculum which underwent change due to wartime circumstances was the training of women to replace the depleted male workforce. Towards the end of the war Rutherford College was also involved in the training of disabled soldiers in preparation for peacetime.

Northumbria University's Trinity Building on the left

But perhaps one of the most tangible links which Northumbria has to the Great War is the stained glass window dedicated to a soldier of the Great War housed in the Trinity Building on Northumberland Road. Formerly part of Trinity Presbyterian Church, the surviving stained glass windows include one, situated on the north aisle of what was the nave, which features the dedication: ‘In loving memory of Liet. J.A.G. Brewis, 4th D[urham] L[ight] I[nfantry], attached RFC, killed whilst flying, April 29 1917. Age 22 years.’

John Arthur Gardner Brewis was born in Sheffield in 1896. His father was, according to the 1901 census, a ‘Foreign Produce Importer’, and the family had moved to Gosforth in Newcastle by 1901. The only son of five children, at the time of the war’s outbreak Brewis had just completed his first year as a medical student at Newcastle Medical College (then part of the University of Durham). Having previously served as a cadet in the Officers’ Training Corps, he ‘was given a commission in the DLI immediately on the outbreak of war’. Following nine months of training, he was sent to Flanders in May 1915 as a second lieutenant with the 2nd Battalion DLI. After sixteen months at the front (during which time he was promoted to lieutenant), he joined the Royal Flying Corps, and acted as an observing officer for six months with 40 Squadron. Wounded twice, on returning from his second period of convalescence he qualified as a flying officer in February 1917.

John Arthur Gardner Brewis memorial
Trinity Building, Northumbria University

His career as a pilot was, however, to be short-lived (lasting just two weeks). His short flying career included being one of several British pilots who, on 24 April 1917, attacked an enemy aircraft, forcing it to land, with the resulting capture of two prisoners. Five days later Brewis was shot down by enemy ground fire while flying a morning patrol. RFC headquarters initially believed that he was unhurt and had probably been taken prisoner, but five months later in September 1917 he was reported as having been killed in action.

In the immediate aftermath of the news, Brewis’ parents received many expressions of sympathy, which later found tangible form in a number of memorials. In addition to the stained glass window in Trinity building on Northumbria’s campus, his name features on the Flying Service Memorial at Arras, on a plaque in Newcastle’s medical school, on a memorial in St Nicholas’ Church, Gosforth, on a plaque in Gosforth Memorial Welfare Centre, and on a plaque in Alnmouth golf club to its members who fell in the conflict.

James McConnel is a Reader in History at Northumbria University.  He studied at the universities of Sheffield and Durham. He joined Northumbria University in November 2008. He specialises in Irish and British History.  He is the author of The Irish Parliamentary Party and the Third Home Rule Crisis (Four Courts Press: Dublin, 2013).

History and American Studies Featured in Humanities Video

For those of you who missed it, check out this short video that Northumbria University has produced for our Humanities Department. It includes some screen time with Brian Ward (Professor in American Studies) and James McConnel (Programme Director and Reader in History). Also featured are two 2013 History graduates Rachael Farnworth and Joe Holt.