The farmer who travelled 2,000 miles to say: He died for me

There, he set his stone on the grave of a fellow dalesman who had given his life for him through an extraordinary act of self-sacrifice.

In the Crimean War (1853-56), British men who were called up could nominate a willing substitute. John Barr, a friend of William Wass, agreed to go in place of the farmer, who lived at Ardenside, Hawnby, near Helmsley. The reason he volunteered is unknown but perhaps he had fewer family commitments.

Serving with the 17th Lancers, Barr rode in the famous Charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava. Though he survived that calamitous triumph, in which two-thirds of the 673 Lancers perished in charging and capturing the wrong Russian battery, he was killed in an ambush just two days later.

Told of his burial place by two other local men who returned from the war, Wass obtained a stone from Byland Abbey. Unable to read or write, he got a neighbour, William Garbutt, of Hazel Shaw House, Ladhill Gill, to carve on the stone the words: "He died for me, friend of mine."

Either on foot or horseback he then left his native moors, perhaps for the first and only time, for a pilgrimage that took him across the breadth of Europe, down the valley of the Danube, and along the western and northern shores of the Black Sea, into which the Crimea intrudes.

This moving story has been unearthed by Bilsdale historian Mr Dennis Tyerman as part of research into the apparently unrelated topic of a "friendly society" in Bilsdale, where Mr Tyerman chairs the local history study group. By remarkable coincidence, his investigations led him to another striking but little known fragment of local history linked to the Crimean War.

As Mr Tyerman explains in an absorbing booklet that is the fruit of his research, what prompted the discoveries was his curiosity about why Bilsdale's friendly society bore - and still bears - the unusual name of the Inkerman Free Gift. As he unravelled the puzzle he was told the story of William Wass and his stone by former Bilsdale farmer John Garbutt, now retired at Thornton-le-Dale.

For good measure, Mr Garbutt also told him how the two men who brought the news of John Barr's death, John Metcalfe and Brian Barr, were the second and third men over the city wall in the fall of Sebastopol, a turning point in the Crimean War. Years later, Brian Barr, almost certainly a relative of John, was buried in his uniform in Hawnby churchyard.

But neither John Barr's presence at Balaclava, or his death, in the Neish valley, explains the Inkerman connection. Mr Tyerman believes that what might do so is the death in the Battle of Inkerman of a young soldier, Maj Heneage Wynne.

The nephew of the Stokesley squire, he had learned just the day before the battle, in November 1854, that he had inherited the Stokesley manor house and its estate.

"No doubt this would have been of great interest, perhaps sadness, and much discussed in and around Stokesley," notes Mr Tyerman. "The news would inevitably have reached Bilsdale."

Even six years later, at a Stokesley dinner, there was what a newspaper report, turned up by Mr Tyerman, called "a very feeling allusion" to the death of Maj Wynne. So perhaps it is not wildly improbable that the Bilsdale friendly society, formed on the first anniversary of the Battle of Inkerman, took the name of the battle to honour the major's memory.

Mr Tyerman sums up: "It is possible that the circumstances of the major's death when first reported had a profound impact on all sections of the local population, not least the members of a local friendly society."

These intriguing military associations aside, Mr Tyerman's booklet casts fascinating light on the world of the friendly society, a key means of self-help in relieving poverty and hardship in pre-welfare-state England. Even small villages often had their own society, and a predecessor of Bilsdale's Inkerman, charmingly named Flower of the Dales, was No 2,374 of "lodges" in the Manchester region of the Order of Oddfellows.

Sometimes invested, small sums paid monthly by members provided a fund from which modest but often crucial benefits were paid. Probably adopting universal practice, for most societies were run on similar lines, the Bilsdale rules imposed a curfew on benefit recipients, who were not allowed out after 7pm between October and April.

Members were also obliged to attend the funeral of other members, walking behind the hearse to church.

No-one with a criminal record could gain membership, which was also denied to anyone not vaccinated against smallpox, whose victims often became blind. No benefits were paid for sickness due to fighting or disorderly conduct, and any member who worked, gambled or drank in the pub while on benefit faced explusion.

In 1930, a new rule withheld benefit from anyone injured driving a motor vehicle. If funds fell below a "safe" level, often £100, members could be charged a top-up levy.

Unusually for a local history study, Mr Tyerman's booklet does not screen out significant detail from elsewhere. He notes that while women were excluded from most friendly societies (though they could receive benefit as widows) some women formed their own groups. About 1900, the Bedale ladies' amicable society had 123 members. Meanwhile, the Hovingham benefit society folded because its benefits were too generous. And in 1845, "the Wombleton Free Gift came to an untimely end when a member stole the funds."

Nearly all the once-ubiquitous friendly societies have vanished completely. Amazingly, Bilsdale's continued disbursing benefits, sometimes to institutions like the church or cricket club, but still occasionally to individuals, until 1985.

Now with about 20 members, less than a sixth of the number 50 years ago, it still survives as a social gathering - an annual dinner held at its long-time meeting place, the Buck inn, where old friendships are renewed.

Thanks to Mr Tyerman, those who gather there next June will have a stronger sense of the history behind them. And no doubt they will spare a thought for John Barr and his mind-blowing self-sacrifice, William Wass and his incredible journey - and the luckless Maj Wynne, posthumously honoured, the Bilsdale Inkermans might like to think, in the very name of their society.

l The Inkerman Free Gift by Dennis Tyerman (Bilsdale study group, £4.50, from Stokesley Bookshop or Claridge's, Helmsley).