Alnwick Gazette Almanack
Menin Gate
Janet Rice has submitted the following:
Richard was born at Roddam in 1891, one of ten children of Thomas, a quarryman, and Margaret. He was the older brother of Thomas Hall who died in Jerusalem in 1918. In 1911 the family was living at Brandon where Thomas, a widower, was a rabbit catcher. Richard was a rabbit and mole catcher. Richard was a territorial and would have been among the first to be called up.
On 19 July 1915, the Newcastle Journal reported that Thomas, now a gamekeeper at Hedgeley, had received a letter from his son’s commanding officer advising that he had been killed in action and that: “he was buried at night behind the trenches, together with two comrades who had also fallen.”
Richard would have taken part in the second Battle of Ypres when the Germans released poison gas into the British trenches, the first time it had been used.
The Menin Gate stands in Belgian Flanders, a memorial to the men with no known grave.
Morpeth Herald 23/07/1915 carries a brief obituary:
Second-Lieut. Nixon has sent a letter from the front informing Mr T. Hall, gamekeeper, Hedgeley, that his son, Private Richard Mather [sic] Hall, 7th Northumberland Fusiliers, was killed in action on July 1st and was buried at night behind the trenches, together with two comrades who had also fallen. Private R.M. Hall was in his 24th year.
He is remembered at Eglingham on E18.01, in the Battalion History and in Powburn on P39.01