AMATEUR historians have paid tribute to local councils for supporting their work chronicling the heroic stories of Keighley’s war dead.

The Men of Worth Project has received funding from parish and town councils to help its members research information about people in the First and Second World Wars.

The fruits of that research with third during recent Remembrance Sunday parades in Keighley, Haworth, Oakworth and Cross Roads, as people with the reading-out of names of men who died 100 years ago, in 1915, during the First World War.

Keighley Town Council provided money from its Acorn Fund for equipment earlier this year.

Haworth, Cross Roads and Stanbury Parish Council gave £186 so that Men of Worth could buy 20 battalion war diaries from the National Archives.

The Bradford Council-funded Oakworth Forward group paid for three years’ description to ancestry.com, enabling Men of Worth to download hundreds of records.

Men of Worth spokesman Andy Wade said: “All the councillors see the value of our work to their constituents.

“Cllr John Huxley told me that having these names to read out this year in Haworth added the right kind of respect, recognition and emotion for the people present at their ceremony.

“Similar sentiments came from Cllr Tito Arana for the Cross Roads people, and also the Oakworth people who spoke to me personally after our own ceremony.”

“There are no conditions from us for supplying these names, it's part of what we are doing, so we would have done this whether or not we got the grant money. But it’s great to be supported by the public bodies.

“Some men's names from ancestry.com are relevant to more than one village as people moved around in their lives much as they do today.”

Men of Worth is supplying each village with full details of each name read out on Remembrance Sunday, to place on council websites so that anyone can could them.