Additional general notes on the memorial
Private Herford (2860) of 24th Battalion Royal Fusiliers died from a grenade blast in the trenches of Flanders on 28th February 1916 aged 25.
He is buried in grave I G20 of Brown’s Road Military Cemetery, Festubert, France. There are 1,071 men buried or commemorated here. He is also commemorated on the Great Gable War Memorial (dedicated on 24th April 1924).
He was the son of Charles H. and Marie Catherine Herford (nee Betge) of 5 Parkfield Road, Didsbury. His mother came from Bremen (Germany), and it is believed that the marriage took place there as it cannot be traced in British records.
His father, Charles, was a University Professor and was at least second generation British. He belonged to the large Teutonic population of Manchester, many of whom were Unitarian- as was the Herford family.
Siegfried began his education at Lady Barn School, Withington Manchester from 1899 to 1903. This was the favoured school of his community. However he did not thrive there, partly because many of his relatives were on the staff, and partly because he is believed to have been autistic- he was subject to long periods of silence punctuated by violent outbursts of physical energy. He was then sent away for three years to Boxgrove School, Surrey. There he showed a natural proclivity to mathematical thought. From 1906 to 1908 he attended Manchester Grammar School, and was then sent away again for a year to the Herman Lietz Schule at Bieberstein, Germany. Towards the end of his time there he took part in a School Expedition to climb Mount Hekla in Iceland. In 1909 he enrolled in the School of Engineering at Manchester University. He was at the top of his class in mathematics and physics when graduating in 1912. He then obtained a postgraduate scholarship which allowed him to do aeronautical research at the Royal Aircraft Factory, Farnborough, Hampshire.
The expedition to Iceland gave him a real interest in rock climbing, and he is regarded as being one of the founders of the modern sport of Rock Climbing. By 1911 he had invented the “girdle traverse” practising at Castle Naze in the Peak District of Derbyshire before refining his concept further on Scafell. In the spring of 1914 he and three companions achieved a benchmark in British rock climbing when they negotiated the Flake Pitch on the Central Buttress of Scafell, after reconnoitring the difficulties both from below and above.
He then joined the Army as a private, because his heritage prevented him from obtaining a commission as an Officer.
So how is there a window to him in Eskdale? Originally it was in ‘a Chapel’ in Manchester. Almost certainly this was Cross Street Chapel, Manchester. This was, and is, the main Unitarian Church in central Manchester. The chapel was destroyed in the Second World War Blitz, and subsequently rebuilt.
The Outward Bound Movement was founded by Kurt Hahn (1886 to 1974), who had established Gordonstoun School in 1934 (most famous alumni the Duke of Edinburgh who also studied for a time at Salem). Gordonstoun was modelled on the Schule Schloss Salem, Germany. Through a fellow student to Herford at the Lietz Schule, by the name of Eric Meissner, the Schule Schloss was a direct development of the principles of the Lietz Schule- the same principles that underpin Outward Bound.