How Lathom’s ‘Tin City’ became home to our war horse heroes

Horses being unloaded at Ormskirk Station before making their way to Lathom Park

Horses and mules played a significant role in the Great War. One in four sent abroad were trained right on our doorstep at the Lathom Park Remount Depot, near Ormskirk, writes Claudia Tanner

War horses charging with the cavalry,

for many, is an iconic image of the First World War.

Of the one million sent overseas to help with the war effort, a quarter of these grand animals were trained near Ormskirk.

They were imported from around the world to Liverpool and transported to the Remount Depot, Lathom Park. This became “one of the largest, if not the largest, establishments of its kind in the world”, reported the Liverpool ECHO in 1916.

Susan Dunn from Lathom Park Trust says records show there were 215,313 of the four-legged members of the Army trained there between September 1914 and November 1917 and potentially there were up to 250,000 throughout the war.

However, Susan says that beast and man bravely charging towards the enemy, as depicted in the Spielberg blockbuster War Horse, does not show the full reality of the animal’s role.

“The cavalry was one aspect but the military mainly used horses for pulling carts and wagons – for transporting artillery, supplies and to carry wounded soldiers to hospital,” she says.

“Logistically, the war couldn’t have been fought without horses on either side.”

When the conflict broke out in August 1914, the port of Liverpool was chosen for the importing of horses, along with Bristol and Southampton.

There was no suitable site for the training of horses near the

city so Lord Lathom told the War Department it could use his ancestral home of Lathom Park.

“The depot was known as the ‘Tin City’ by locals because the sheds, stables and accommodation were put up very quickly and made out of corrugated iron. Unfortunately, there is little awareness about Lathom Park’s depot today.”

The horses that came to the depot were mainly unbroken, wild horses brought from Canada, North America, Argentina and Ireland.

Germany’s U-boat campaign against merchant shipping intensified over the course of the war and many horses would not have survived the sea journey to Liverpool. Those that did were transported by rail from Liverpool into Ormskirk and driven on the hoof through the country lanes into the park.

In February 1915, a specially-built railway line was constructed

from Skelmersdale station to Lathom Park to transport the horses to the depot. As well as imported horses, the Government took horses from farmers by compulsory purchase. The Army were looking for particular types, such as heavy, strong draught horses and mules.

In August 1914, the ECHO reported on Lord Derby’s request in the House of Lords for instructions to be sent to remount officers “not to take farmers’ horses unless absolutely necessary”. The farmers also benefitted from use of the Lathom horses on their land for a fee and adverts offering such services appeared in the local newspapers.

The depot was a large employer for the local area with men from near and far going there for work. A number of them, the likes of blacksmiths and farriers, went there as civilians.

There were about 250 to 300 soldiers at the base as permanent

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At the end of the war some of the surviving horses were sold as meat to French and Belgian butchers, being regarded as unfit for any other purpose.

Tens of thousands of loyal animals were ‘stranded’ abroad after the war but were rescued thanks to Winston Churchill’s intervention.

Documents unearthed at the National Archives reveal that the animals were also at risk of disease and hunger. Bungling officials couldn’t get them home – the Ministry of Shipping had promised to return 12,000 a week but were struggling to get 3,000 back.

Despite his reputation as an abrasive character, Churchill was a lifelong animal lover. He was furious and fired off angry memos to officials.

This led to extra vessels being used as transport and the number of horses returned to Britain rose to 9,000 a week.

What happened to animals after conflict’s end?

A soldier drives a horse and supply cart through waterlogged fields and roads in 1916

Vets treating a horse wounded in action at the British veterinary hospital in France in November 1914

staff, with many more coming to be trained on how to use the horses. The number of men recorded at the depot on November 18, 1917, was 1,782. A total of 5,649 men who ‘passed out’ through the depot went to serve on the Western Front.

Mrs Dunn adds: “All personnel at the depot were militarised in January 1915, so many of those civilians became soldiers overnight. It cost the military less to pay soldiers than to pay private or contract labour.”

One of those men was John Westhead, the village blacksmith in nearby Newburgh. He was 44 years old when he was killed by a shell in France in October 1916, leaving a widow and young family.

The ECHO reported on one Lathom Park soldier who met his death on home soil. There was an accident at the depot on September 13, 1915, in which a Private J. Holden, aged 44, from Bootle, was thrown from the horse he was riding, as part of a team of four pulling a wagon, causing the other animals to bolt. He fell between the horses and was trampled to death while another groom was injured.

“There were a number of accidents at Lathom,” says Mrs Dunn. “There were one or two on the railway. Two men who worked there were hit by a train as they walked from the depot on the tracks.”

Of course, the human tragedy is so often the focus on the war – but these animals suffered unimaginable suffering too. The life of a war horse was short – there was an appallingly high death rate

due to exhaustion, disease and frontline charges.

“It must have been terrifying for the horses on the front line with bullets and bombs going off all around them. They’re such sensitive creatures,” says Mrs Dunn. “And many of the soldiers undoubtedly got quite attached to the animals and found it tough when they were killed.

“The author Jilly Cooper quotes the number of horses that died in the conflict as eight million, which must include those from all fighting countries.

“The horses that were sent to the battlefields really are the forgotten army of the First World War.”

Over the course of the war, the vulnerability of horses to modern machine gun and artillery fire reduced their usefulness on the battlefield. This paralleled the development of tanks, which would ultimately replace cavalry in shock tactics. However, while the perceived value of the horse in the First World War changed dramatically, they still played a significant role throughout the war.

Of the million horses sent to war, only 62,000 returned home. Blown up, poisoned by gas, left injured to die in No Man’s Land or ravished by disease – the plight of the war horse is perhaps the forgotten tragedy of the Great War.

* Horses For The War – The Story Of The World War 1 Remount Depot at Lathom Park, Lathom, Lancashire’ by Lathom Park Trust is available for £11 plus £1.50 p&p. For more details, visit www.lathom-park-trust.org.uk.

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World War 100