William McGrane
Private 5450 - 1st Bn. Irish Guards
Killed in action on Tuesday 16th March 1915
Buried in Guards Cemetery, Cuinchy, Pas-de-Calais, France
William McGrane was born in Warrington in 1893 to John McGrane from Dublin, aged 33,
and Jessie from Gnosall Heath, about the same age. Jessie was the daughter of John &
Annie Armstrong.
In 1881 Jessie, her widowed mother and four younger siblings (all their first names
beginning with A) were living at Coton End. Jessie was working as a servant and her
mother as a dressmaker.
She married John McGrane at St Helens, Lancashire in 1889 and in 1891 they were at
Pemberton’s Yard, Warrington, where John worked as a cabinetmaker’s porter.
In 1901 they were at Sloop Yard, Sankey, Warrington and John was a labourer at the
leadworks; William was 9, with a younger brother, and two sisters.
By 1911 John was unemployed (general labourer) and the family was at 154 Evelyn
Street, Warrington with cousin John Sylvester, aged 38, from Gnosall Heath (labouring for
a soap manufacturer), sister Agnes, now 13, working as a nursemaid and brother John.
William, 18, was working as a carter (contractor).
He enlisted in Gnosall as Private 5450 in the 1st Battalion Irish Guards (who had been
stationed at Wellington), and went to France with them on 4
th
February 1915.
He was killed in action on Tuesday 16
th
August 1915 and was awarded 1915 Star, Victory
and British medals.
William McGrane is buried in the Guards Cemetery, Windy Corner, Cuinchy, Pas-de-
Calais, France, I. D. 16.
He is listed in the appendix to Volume II of Rudyard Kipling’s book “The Irish Guards in the
Great War”. Kipling wrote this tribute to the regiment in memory of his son John, also an
Irish Guardsman, who died at Loos a month after William.
Guards Cemetery, Cuinchy, Pas-de-Calais, France
Historical Information
A little west of the crossroads known to the army as 'Windy Corner' was a house used as a
battalion headquarters and dressing station. The cemetery grew up beside this house.
The original cemetery is now Plots I and II and Rows A to S of Plot III. It was begun by the
2nd Division in January 1915, and used extensively by the 4th (Guards) Brigade in and
after February. It was closed at the end of May 1916, when it contained 681 graves. After
the Armistice it was increased when more than 2,700 graves were brought in from the
neighbouring battlefields - in particular the battlefields of Neuve-Chapelle, the Aubers
Ridge and Festubert - and from certain smaller cemeteries
Guards Cemetery now contains 3,444 burials and commemorations of the First World
War. 2,198 of the burials are unidentified but there are special memorials to 36 casualties
known or believed to be buried among them. Other special memorials commemorate six
casualties buried in Indian Village North Cemetery, whose graves were destroyed by shell
fire, and five Indian soldiers originally buried in the Guards Cemetery but afterwards
cremated in accordance with the requirements of their faith.