PRIVATE JAMES WINSTANLEY
YORK AND LANCASTER REGIMENT
6TH OCTOBER 1916 AGE 23
BURIED: CONTAY BRITISH CEMETERY, FRANCE
You can picture the scene at 12 Talbot Road, Plank Lane, Leigh in Lancashire, a terraced house adjacent to the colliery where at one time James, his father, John, and his younger brother, also John, all worked: John as a miner, a hewer of coal, James and John as colliery labourers underground. This was in 1911, James and John Junior were 18 and 14 respectively.
Mrs Winstanley, James Winstanley's mother, chose his inscription. She also filled in the 1911 census form, which showed that she had a job as a cotton weaver and that the house had three bedrooms, a parlour and a kitchen for the ten people who lived there.
Winstanley served with the 6th Battalion the York and Lancaster Regiment. This was raised in Pontefract in August 1914, went to Gallipoli in July 1915, was evacuated from there in December and was then posted to France, the Somme, arriving in July 1916. Winstanley died of wounds in a Casualty Clearing Station at Contay on 6 October 1916. There is no evidence as to how he was wounded but the battalion had been in action during the battles of Flers-Courcellete, 15-22 September, and Thiepval, 26-30 September.
By the time he joined the army James Winstanley must have left home as he is commemorated on the Dalton Main Colliery war memorial. This lists the names of those who worked in the Silverwood and Roundwood Collieries in Rotherham, Yorkshire, more than 60 miles from Plank Lane.