CHARLES Robertshaw grew up in Cross Roads but was living in Lancashire by the time the First World War broke out.

Yet he still found time during his precious leave from the army to return to the village of his birth.

Friends said that his conversations during that winter 1917 visit exhibited “uncommon unselfishness and fine patriotic spirit”.

Those friends were never to see Charles again, for he died soon after returning to the frontline in France.

Charles was born in 1879 and grew up in various houses in Lees and Cross Roads, near where his father worked on the railways.

By the age of 11 Charles was a worsted spinner, rising to roller coverer by the time he was 21.

Charles married Elizabeth Maud Andrews in 1906, and five years later he had a son and daughter and was working as a cotton weaver over the border in Nelson.

Enlisting with the East Lancashire Regiment in Preston in 1916, Charles was dead by the following March after contracting pneumonia.

A former member of the Wesleyan Sunday School in Lees, Charles was remembered as a conscientious, intelligent and well-read young man interested in “matters dealing with social betterment”.