STEETON flower enthusiast Wright Cockshott was one of the many men posted as missing following a First World War battle.

And like most of them he was later declared dead and his parents were sent a heartbreaking letter to that effect by the War Office.

The army concluded that Wright, a peacetime weaving overlooker at John Clough and Sons in Steeton, had been killed in a British advance on or about September 3 in 1916.

Wood sawyer Christopher Cockshott and his wife Sarah had to wait almost a year from the battle before receiving the final, devastating letter.

Wright had been born in 1889 in Keighley, growing up in Steeton and enlisting in the army under the Derby Scheme in 1916.

He would have started training immediately as his battalion went out to France sometime near early and Wright had been there just a month before being killed.

At home in Steeton, Wright and been an active member of the Steeton and District Rose Society.

Just days after learning of Wright’s death, the Cockshotts learned that another of their five soldier sons, Horse Transport Corps private William, had been taken to hospital with a broken thigh after being kicked by a horse.