Yesterday was Remembrance Sunday. For anyone who would like to know more about the people named on Wilmslow’s Second World War memorials, the Wilmslow Historical Society has published a full record of them.

Greater Love Hath No Man, compiled by David Briggs, runs to more than 230 pages. It covers the names on the main memorial by St Bartholomew’s, the Handforth memorial, and those at St John’s Lindow, the United Reformed Church, Wilmslow Methodist, St Philip’s Alderley Edge, Styal, Dean Row and Water Lane Chapels, and Wilmslow Cemetery. It also adds a few people with Wilmslow connections who are not named on any local memorial.

Each entry begins with the Commonwealth War Graves Commission details. These are followed by what could be found in regimental, squadron and ship histories and in The Alderley and Wilmslow Advertiser, which often printed an address, a pre-war occupation and a photograph.

Over half of those named served in the RAF, most of them in Bomber Command. Others served at sea, or in France, North Africa, Italy, the Far East and north-west Europe. Chief Wren Phyllis Bacon, aged 21, died when the SS Aguila was torpedoed in August 1941. May Brandon, a nurse from Dean Row, was killed when a parachute mine fell on the Barrowmore sanatorium near Chester in November 1940. One Alderley Edge family lost three sons in 1943. Nearly a quarter of the deaths were in training or accidents, and several came in the last days of the war or after it had ended.

Some entries are much fuller than others, and one man, John Goddard, a civilian flight engineer, remains largely unidentified. If you have photographs, letters or other information about anyone in the record, or spot an error, please contact the Wilmslow Historical Society at wilmslowhistoricalsociety@gmail.com.

We will remember them.

Note: This is a big file (14.3Mb, 233 pages) so be aware if downloading on your phone.