These are the history pieces which appeared in the Batley St Mary of the Angels and Birstall St Patrick’s bulletin during February 2025. As the parishes are jointly administered and a single bulletin produced, the history pieces are not solely focused on St Mary of the Angels.
01/02 February 2025
On 3 February 1929 Councillor Patrick Higgins was re-elected President of Birstall St. Patrick’s Catholic Young Men’s Society and Institute. The Bishop of Leeds, Rev. Father Russell (Birstall St Patrick’s) and Rev. Father McBride (Batley St Mary’s) were appointed honorary Presidents. Other appointments included Mr. J. Higgins and Mr. J. Judge, vice-presidents; Mr. T. O’Brien, secretary; Mr. T. Madden, treasurer; Mr. J. Maguire and Mr. M. Casey, auditors; Messrs. George Battye, John Snee, Willie Judge, Tom Stention, Frank Brannan, Charles Speight, Robert White, Tom Twyford and Cormack Kelly, committee. A profit of £17 for the year was reported, an increase of £6 over the previous.
08/09 February 2025
The 17th annual Mrs. Sunderland musical competition, held in Huddersfield in February 1905, included for the first time a choir boy soloists’ section. After successfully competing in the heats on 10 February, St Mary’s choir boy Willie Berry (14), was one of three boys chosen to sing in the final at a packed Huddersfield Town Hall the following day. There he performed Cherubin’s Ave Maria to huge plaudits. The Yorkshire Post declared “his singing was remarkable for purity of tone and right feeling.” He was awarded the first prize of £1 1s. Less than three months later, he was appointed principal boy chorister at St Anne’s RC Cathedral, Leeds.
For more about William Berry please read William Berry – A Beautiful Voice Stilled.
15/16 February 2025
On 15 February 1948, after confirming 62 members of St Patrick’s, Bishop Poskitt of Leeds blessed two gifts given to the church in memory of those parishioners who had paid the supreme sacrifice in the Second World War. One was a communion plate presented by Mrs. Sarah Maguire in memory of her and her late husband Patrick’s 20-year-old son Fusilier John Maguire, killed in Italy on 23 April 1945. The other was a reproduction Lourdes grotto, designed by Allan Preston of Monk Ings Avenue and erected at the back of church by the ex-servicemen and women of the parish from 1939-1945, in memory of their comrades who lost their lives in the war, and in thanksgiving for their own safe return.
22/23 February 2025
On 23 February 1915 the funeral of St Mary’s parishioner Pte. Edmund Battye (22) took place with full military honours in Batley cemetery, in a service performed by Fr. Lea. He was one of seven soldiers serving with the local Territorial battalion, the 1st/4th King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, who drowned on 19 February in a raft-building training accident on a deep pond (known locally as a gyme) by the River Trent at Morton, Lincolnshire. The battalion contained many other parishioners, several who witnessed the accident. Two, William Barber and Thomas William Chappell, were involved in rescue attempts. They were both later killed in action on the Somme in 1916, and, along with Edmund, are commemorated on the church War Memorial. Among those rescued was St Mary’s parishioner Matthew Crayton.
For more about Edmund Battye click here.
For more about William Barber click here and here.
For more about Thomas William Chappell click here.
Past To Present Genealogy 