IN THE four years from July 1914, the community of Grandpont lost a generation of young men.

A total of 66 soldiers are named on Grandpont’s war memorial at St Matthew’s Church, in Marlborough Road, Oxford.

Now a group, including some of those men’s descendants, is hoping to tell their stories.

After the 2014 centenary of the start of the First World War, 2015 is the 125th anniversary of St Matthew’s, completed just after Grandpont was built in the 1880s.

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Jim Tallett’s father Kenneth and uncle Horace were born in Buckingham Street at the end of the 1800s. Both fought in France as teenagers, but only his father returned.

Private Horace James Tallett of the King’s Royal Rifle Corps is immortalised on the memorial. He was killed in The Battle of Arras in spring 1917, aged just 19.

Oxford Mail:

Private Horace James Tallet from Grandpont, who was killed in battle in 1917.

Mr Tallett, 83, said most of the Grandpont boys joined the same battalion of the Oxfordshire & Buckinghamshire Light Infantry – the 2nd/4th.

The grandfather-of-two from Risinghurst said: “I think this was the battalion all the boys from Grandpont were in, because it was such a small community.

“All these boys had been to the Grandpont church school together.”

His father kept photos of many of the men he served alongside, and a few years ago Jim Tallett started a project to find out more about them.

The former professional Hammond organ player said: “So many men were killed from a relatively small place.

“It was a sort of sociological exercise to find out how their families coped afterwards.”

Now Oxford historian Liz Woolley has picked up on his project, and recruited 10 volunteers – all either Grandpont residents or St Matthew’s churchgoers.

She plans to make a 10-minute documentary film about the men and an exhibition. She also wants to create a trail around each house in Grandpont that lost a family member, to show people how the community was dented.

The Marlborough Road resident has put all 66 names online and is asking anyone who thinks they had any relatives in Grandpont to get in touch to help build the picture.

Ms Woolley, 47, said: “Grandpont was only built in the 1880s, so this happened just as it was getting going.

“To lose 66 young men in the space of four years for this relatively small suburb is a sobering thought.

“These families all knew each other.”

She hopes to put on an exhibition and show the documentary at St Matthew’s on the anniversary of its completion, June 21.

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