Description

For generations the villagers of Newdigate had lived an ordered, class structured life. The wealthy, along with their servants, lived in the big houses. The poor lived in small, cramped cottages, and after a basic education at the village school, the boys went to work on the fields and the girls worked in service, helped look after the family and hopefully got married. When war was declared a new spectrum of opportunities presented itself. The wealthy took their ‘natural’ places as leaders and for the poor the chance beckoned of excitement and travel beyond the confines of Newdigate. Small wonder that in 1914 the young and not so young men of the village enthusiastically answered the call. This book tells their story, it is a book that could have been written about any village in the land – well nearly any village. Recent research indicates that there are only about forty villages in the whole of England which suffered no losses in the Great War, Newdigate was not amongst them.