Saturday 18 April 2015

Saxby on Hill, the Airship R38(ZR2) Memorial and WW1 war graves in Hull's Chanterland Avenue graveyard

Over Easter I took a drive into North Lincolnshire to do a bit of photographing for Dasha's genealogy research. 
Dasha lives in Australia and an ancestor was the rector at the Saxby on Hill village church. 
Dasha's blog link below.
http://patchingpixies.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/hereford.html?showComment=1429381027870#c4003329626004043811

In fact Dasha is in the UK now, well actually she may well be in Germany right now, but she wasn't going to have time to visit North Lincolnshire this trip, which is why I volunteered to trip across the Humber river on her behalf.
It was a delightfully sunny day and I thoroughly enjoyed finding pictures of the stained glass windows that were dedicated to members of her family.
 
The church itself is tucked up an incline and the graveyard was a feast of wildly scattered primroses, so pretty.

Anyway I must have got the taste for graveyards because Friday I finally took the dog to a nearby, very large graveyard for a look round.
I had noticed a War Graves plaque at the entrance as I have driven past and wanted to see what war graves were there.

Well there is this for a start -



This monument is to commemorate the men and officers of the Royal Air Force and the Rigid Air Detachment of the United States Navy
and the members of staff of the National Physical Laboratory
that were lost in the Airship R38 disaster which took place on
August 24th 1921.
I found this on Wikepedia which sums up what happened

"The R38 class (also known as the A class) of rigid airships was designed for Britain's Royal Navy during the final months of World War I, intended for long-range patrol duties over the North Sea. Four similar airships were originally ordered by the Admiralty, but orders for three of these (R39, R40 and R41) were cancelled after the armistice with Germany and R.38, the lead ship of the class was sold to the United States Navy in October 1919 before completion. On 23 August 1921, R-38 was destroyed by a structural failure while in flight over the city of Hull. It crashed into the Humber estuary, killing 44 out of the 49 crew aboard.[1][2] At the time of her first flight she was the world's largest airship.[3] Her destruction was the first of the great airship disasters, followed by the US airship Roma in 1922 (34 dead), the French Dixmude in 1923 (52 dead), the British R101 in 1930 (48 dead), the USS Akron in 1933 (73 dead), and the German Hindenburg in 1937 (36 dead)."

Zr2aloft.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R38-class_airship

There's a fuller explanation here
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/making_history/makhist10_prog10a.shtml





The graveyard had a great deal of damage to tombstones which was sad to see. Some bloody hooligans have gone round tumbling over and damaging far too many of the gravestones.
It makes me cross to see this, and sad,that lives once lived have been laid to rest, only to have some daft sods go upend their tombstones today.
I may not be religiously inclined but I do believe in respect.



What is totally charming and I must find out what the thinking is behind this, is that there are war graves set all around the huge graveyard, in amongst gravestones from all ages past.
If you enlarge the picture, you can see where they have been mounted for far enough and if I turned in any direction, the scene is the same.
It is a large place and there are a lot of lads remembered there.
I wonder if their remains have been found and laid more recently so I must do some finding out about this.


 
and here's some of the lads remembered
 



I make no apology for showing gravestones,.
Like I said, I believe in respect where it's due.
There's an awful lot of guys laid here from WW1 sadly.

2 comments:

  1. What a beautiful graveyard - so much history there. I'm with you regarding the disrespectful people that seem to find it in their hearts to cause such damage. How unfortunate that they never seem to get caught and be made to atone for what they've done.

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  2. Liniecat - WOW!! That is a ton of really interesting information. Thank you for sharing it. And I would love to see Dasha's stained glass windows -- will you or she be sharing them ? Thanks for the respect and the neat images - I'm inclined to walk around graveyards myself at times. Take good care, Karen

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