“IT was in the early months of the war that fame in a somewhat unexpected form came to the village,” said the brochure compiled in 1921 to accompany the unveiling of the Witton Park war memorial by a member of royalty.
“Up to that time its streets of empty houses had been regarded as a reproach or referred to with ridicule; but there was at least one person, the late Father Krajicek, who saw in those empty houses a haven of refuge for Belgians driven from their own homes by the relentless cruelty of German invaders.
“It was on the night of October 6, 1914, that the first party of 43 Belgian refugees arrived to take up temporary residence in the village. Thousands of people gathered from all parts of the district and invaded the township to help the inhabitants to accord a real north country welcome to the exiles.
“Witton Park in that one night had re-established its fame, since it was the first place in the north to welcome refugees.
“Altogether some 170 individuals were adopted and it is not unlikely that in various parts of Belgium today, Witton Park is regarded as a spot for ever associated with Belgian history and its great struggle for freedom.”
Memories 689 and 691 have told how south Durham welcomed several hundred Belgian refugees who had been driven from their homes in the earliest days of the First World War after experiencing appalling atrocities at the hands of the German invaders.
Witton Park, near Bishop Auckland, took in the largest contingent, due to the work of its parish priest, Fr John Francis Krajicek – and now a campaign has been launched to restore his dilapidated headstone which is in a lost graveyard of “forgotten souls”.
Fr Krajicek was born in London in 1877, 10 years after his parents had emigrated from Moravia, which is now in the Czech Republic. His father was a cooper, and his brothers worked in printing or plumbing, but he decided to become a priest, attending St Cuthbert’s College, Ushaw, which was the principle Roman Catholic seminary in the north of England.
He was ordained in 1903, became an assistant priest in Stella-on-Tyne, Gateshead, and by 1914, was in charge of his own parish of St Chad’s in Witton Park.
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The village was going through a tough time. It had exploded into life in 1846 when Bolckow Vaughan had built a blast furnace beside the railway, midway between the coal of Durham and the iron ore of Cleveland. Within 30 years, more than 4,000 people lived in its hurriedly constructed terraces but then, in 1882, Bolckow Vaughan relocated to Middlesbrough, shutting down the ironworks and the village’s reason to exist.
Mining kept some villagers employed, but when the war broke out, there were plenty of empty properties.
Fr Krajicek travelled to London to tell the authorities how the village could accommodate many Belgian refugees, most of whom were Catholic.
He was supported by the Labour MPs for Barnard Castle and Bishop Auckland, Arthur Henderson, an ironworker, and Ben Spoor, who came from Witton Park.
Fr Krajicek became the refugees’ cheerleader, welcoming them in October 1914, acting as their spokesperson and also helping to fund raise – many of them had fled leaving all their possessions behind.
During 1915, a Belgian township was established at Birtley, near Chester-le-Street, beside a munitions factory and, gradually, most of the refugees moved to live and work there.
By September 1916, there were only eight Belgian children left in the Witton Park school whereas the previous year there had been 34.
While the refugees moved from his parish, Fr Krajicek was still personally touched by the war. His London cousins had joined the Rifle Brigade, and two were killed in action on the Western Front, including Lance Corporal Joseph Krajicek, 19, who died near Ypres in Belgium on July 30, 1915. His body was never recovered, so he is commemorated on the Menin Gate in the Belgian town.
Witton Park also lost men during the war. It sent more than 400 to fight, and 71 did not return.
It commemorated them on a plaque in a memorial hall which was unveiled by Princess Marie Louise on October 25, 1921.
The princess was one of Queen Victoria’s 42 grandchildren, and she was a cousin of King George V. After an unhappy marriage to a German prince, she became a hard-working royal, and she was in the North East to support the work of one of her favourite organisations, the YMCA.
It was quite a coup for a small, unfashionable village like Witton Park to get a member of royalty to unveil their memorial, as most places made do with a local senior members of the church and army.
Perhaps it was because of Witton Park’s generous treatment of the Belgian refugees, which was celebrated in the unveiling programme, that encouraged the princess to attend.
She was presented with “a bouquet by a little girl who lost her father from the effect of war injuries just too late for his name to be included on the list – the sadly long list of 69 men on the bronze tablet”.
Sadly, Fr Krajicek, who had done so much for the Belgians, was not there.
On December 10, 1918 – just a month after Armistice Day – he had died of pneumonia, linked to the Spanish Flu epidemic that swept Europe immediately after the war. He was only 42.
He was buried in the cemetery at High Escomb, just down the road from Witton Park, where a church dedicated to St John had been built in 1863 to accommodate the explosion of industrial workers.
However, in 1971, St John’s was demolished. In the cemetery, many of the headstones were bulldozed flat, some were removed, and nature was allowed to take over.
Over the decades, it became terribly overgrown, with even 12ft Victorian memorials covered in brambles.
“My sister, grandfather and great-grandfather are in there and as I looked for their graves, other people became interested so, a couple of years ago, I formed a little group, and we were effectively clearing it as we were looking for our graves,” says Howard Chadwick.
Amid the 50 years of overgrowth, they discovered the last resting place of Fr Krajicek, the writing on his headstone illegible and his crucifix knocked to the ground.
Howard has cleaned it up and has received a quote for £288 to restore the crucifix – a sum he and local enthusiasts Kevin Richardson, Dale Daniel and Bob Dixon are beginning to collect donations towards.
“It is among dozens that we have uncovered and restored to some form of respectability,” says Howard. “When we get it done, it will be the biggest one physically in the cemetery, and he is a very worthy guy – but they were all just forgotten souls.”
Their work will ensure that Fr Krajicek, and his role in this remarkable episode of south Durham’s history which feeds into a much bigger story of global conflict, is remembered.
- If you are interested in the restoration of Fr Krajicek’s memorial or of High Escomb Cemetery, email Howard at wittonparker@yahoo.com or ask to join the High Escomb Cemetery Facebook page
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