CAPTAIN GEORGE EDWARD LISTER HOLROYD, 7th. BATTALION EAST YORKSHIRE REGIMENT.


CAPTAIN GEORGE EDWARD LISTER HOLROYD, 7th. BATTALION EAST YORKSHIRE REGIMENT. DIED OF WOUNDS 12th SEPTEMBER 1916, AGED 35.


Born in Shipley in 1881, Lister was the son of Samuel Holroyd who was a worsted manufacturer. His mother Emma, nee Robinson, came from Ilkley where her family manufactured a popular therapeutic chair. The Robinsons also owned a large house next to the famous moors above Ilkley called Hangingstone, which they ran as a boarding house.
In the 1880s, the Holroyds brought their family to live at Hanginstone and Emma took over the boarding house, whilst her brother Mark controlled the chair manufacturing business.



Lister was educated at Ilkley Grammar and then went on to study at Bradford Technical School and became an apprentice cabinet maker in the family firm. In his spare time he played for Ilkley RUFC and was sufficiently good enough to represent Yorkshire at county level on three occasions.


In 1910 Lister left Ilkley for what was then known as the Northern Nigeria Protectorate. The British Colonial Office was seeking to develop the interior of this vast country and financed infrastructure projects such as railways obtained a position as a foremen on one such scheme.


On the outbreak of war, in August 1914, the British Government decided to use local native troops to invade the neighbouring German colony of Cameroon. The invasion was poorly planned and rapidly turned into a fiasco which was easily repulsed by the better organised German garrison. Lister had volunteered to take part, but in October he was invalided home probably suffering from a tropical illness.


Back in Britain he decided applied for a commission in the army and was gazetted into the 7th Battalion East Yorkshire Regiment and in October 1915 the battalion went to the Western Front with Lister as 2nd Lieutenant. 


In the summer of 1916 the 7th East Yorks were in the Somme area and involved in heavy fighting. Lister was by now promoted to temporary captain and was the commanding officer of 'B' Company. On the 1st September, the battalion was behind the front lines at the village of Sailly-au-Bois when they were hit by a sudden German artillery barrage. Lister was badly wounded by shrapnel and moved to the Number One General Hospital near to Le Havre, where on the 12th September he succumbed to his wounds.


Captain Lister Holroyd lies now in the cemetery at Etretat Churchyard in France and is remembered on Ilkley war memorial at at St Margaret’s Church.



In 1916, The Ilkley Gazette had interviewed Lister about his wartime experiences:

This week Lieut. Lister Holroyd, 7th East Yorks., and son of Mrs Holroyd, Hangingstone, Ilkley, has been home on furlough, after an experience of considerable excitement in the trenches on the battlefront in Flanders. Just now his regiment is enjoying a spell of rest some miles in the rear, and Lieut. Holroyd has taken advantage of this to secure a few days leave.

He has two Ilkley men under him, Corporal H. Lambert and Private Bellerby, who, he says, are "sticking it" well, and proving themselves just the sort of men needed in trench warfare.

Of course, he remarked, the endurance necessary is very considerable. For the trenches are waterlogged and the men are not able to get much in the way of exercise. In consequence of having to remain pretty stationary, we feel the cold acutely.

Still I should not have liked to have been out of it. I would not have missed it for a bit. Fortunately I have enjoyed good health, and this notwithstanding the extremes of temperature between experiencing a summer in Nigeria and a winter in Flanders. I have had a touch of fever, but nothing to speak of.

Asked what they had been doing of late, he remarked that for the last three months they had been simply holding a section of the line. Sometimes things had been very lively, though they were now in a position to repay the Kaiser's compliments with interest.

He had dropped across Trooper Jack King and Corporal Herbert Swales, of the Yorkshire Hussars, but had seen none of the other Ilkley chaps.Talking generally, he remarked that some of the men out yonder thought they had seen something who had never been in the trenches, but a man did not know what fighting really was until he had been in the trenches.



Memorial card





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