A COMMUNITY is trying to find out more about four soldiers from a remote village in the Yorkshire Dales killed in the First World War.

Members of Keld Resource Centre, in Upper Swaledale, have spent months researching the lives of the four people named on their war memorial.

Richard Alderson, Thomas Clarkson, Wm Waller Hutchinson and Robert Rukin all came from the parish of Muker and lived either in Keld village itself or the hamlets of Angram and Skeugh Head.

One of them, Wm Waller Hutchinson died, aged 19, on Armistice Day, November 11, 1918 of pneumonia in a hospital in Caudry, France.

Richard Alderson, 21, was killed whilst taking part in a raiding party in the run up to the Battle of Passchendaele. His body was never found and he is remembered on Menin Gate.

Robert Rukin died on September 29, 1917 aged 35 in one of the final battles of the war.

Robert was a shepherd who farmed in Keld and his dozens of letters he wrote home tell of a country lad desperately trying to keep his spirits up by concentrating on what was happening at home and on the farm.

Thomas Clarkson died on April 30, 1917 aged 27 after being seriously wounded at Etaples.

Local residents have managed to collect photographs, information, telegrams and letters relating to the young men, to put on an exhibition currently on display at Keld Countryside and Heritage Centre, a small, unmanned visitor centre at the head of Upper Swaledale.

Glenda Calvert, from Keld, said: “There could still be other descendants out there in the area. We found one family had 60 letters from the front; the first were sent from Hartlepool, where he went to do training and witnessed a Zeplin attack on Hartlepool.”

Anyone with any more information about the soldiers is asked to email Glenda on: glenda.calvert@tkrc.org.uk or Gillian Figures on; gillian.figures@me.com