SUTTON residents gathered one Sunday in November 1915 to pay tribute to villager Joseph Greenwood Bancroft.

The 24-year-old private with the West Riding Regiment had died the previous week after being shot in the head on the frontline.

Among the large congregation were Joseph’s fellow Baptist Church members, fellow workers at Sutton Mill Cooperative Society, and boys from the village’s 2nd Troop of Boy Scouts.

The Rev FW Pollard pointed out that Joseph was the first of the Baptist Church’s “brave lads” to fall.

Joseph was born in 1889 in Chorlton, Lancashire, and spent his first two years living in Manchester, where his father was a corn and hay dealer’s manager.

In 1911, by the age of 22, Joseph was living at Sutton Mill with his widowed mother and five siblings, while working is a grocer’s assistant for the mill’s Cooperative Society.

A member of Sutton Baptist Church, he became a worker in the Sunday School and was treasurer of the Young Men’s Bible Class, as well as serving on the committee of Sutton Mill Institute.

In its article about his death, the Keighley News reported that ‘Joe’ had been cheerful and open-hearted, fond of a joke, and known practically by all the villagers of Sutton.

Joseph enlisted in 1914 and was sent to France early the following year.