A FORMER Keighley journalist was killed at the Battle of the Somme only two months after being sent to the front lines.

William Edgar Laycock trained as a reporter at the Keighley Herald while in his late teens after a childhood growing up in the town.

By the age of 20 he was on the reporting staff of the Keighley News’s sister paper the Craven Herald, in Skipton, and the next year in 1911 he joined the Southport Visitor.

After three years with the Southport paper he married Lillian Dale, back in Keighley, and in 1915 he attested to the army under the Derby Scheme which encouraged men to enlist rather than wait to be conscripted.

In 1916, while still a Southport reporter, William was called to the Monmouthshire Regiment, and sometime during his four months of training he transferred to the South Wales Borderers.

Sent out to France in late summer, at the age of 26, Private Laycock was killed during the Battle of the Somme.

Although he has no known grave, William is remembered on the Thiepval Memorial in France, the Great War roll of honour book in Keighley Library, and Temple Street Chapel’s war memorial which is on display at Cliffe Castle Museum.