During the transcription of the Roll of Honour it became very apparent that as compiled it was far from being a complete listing of all those fell in the various theatres of the war or died as a result of their wounds after the cessation of hostilities.

Comparison of the names on some parish memorials with the corresponding parish listing in the Roll of Honour by various contributors to the project revealed that in many cases the numbers did not match. Either there were more names on the memorial or more in the transcription.

There are probably many reasons for these descrepencies which could include: cut off dates for names to be added to the RoH and the local memorial being different, different selection criteria for the local memorial and the RoH, late or no submission of the names to the RoH committee, etc. In all likelyhood the reasons will never be fully explained, however we believe that the addenda to the copy of the Roll transcribed were added after the sealing of the copy under the memorial cross on the cathedral green and so 775 names may not be included in that copy of the Roll. Another source of discrepency within the Roll of Honour itself is that some names are listed into more than one parish, it will not come as a surprise if this is also found to apply to local parish memorials.

As these discrepencies came to light I felt that the project could be expanded by attempting to list all the names on all the memorials within the county of Devon, whether it be the local parish memorial, a family plaque in a church, a roll of honour on a wall somewhere, etc. Once this was done I will attempt to collate all the names and maybe, just maybe, come up with a more definitive listing of the fallen of the county of Devon.

There are many sites on the internet listing the names on war memorials, along with information on the men and woman listed. I do not wish to duplicate that work but to simply obtain lists of names which can be used as you wish, but I will use in my personal goal of a new Roll of Honour for the county of Devom

This idea may never come to fruitation but I intend to have a bloody good try, and I would welcome any help to make this a reality. Some have already provided me with listings of local memorials although they have yet to see the fruits of their labours but they should rest assured that the infomation will be used in time and will appear on this website

My goal is to complete this project by the 100 year anniversary of the ending of the state of war between Allied Powers and Germany on 28 June 2019. 28 June 1919 is also significant in that it was exactly 5 years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, a main contribution to the outbreak of the First World War.

Pete Best
Project Co-ordinator