A touching tale of wartime bravery and sibling affection told by our religious tribute correspondent Angus Young.

Set back from the road and partly hidden by neat privet hedges, you might miss Sacred Heart Church if you happen to drive along Southcoates Lane. But the tale behind this equally neat and tidy-looking church is worth telling because it forms an important part of Hull’s First World War history.

The story begins on St Patrick’s Day in 1915 when the first battalion of Royal Dublin Fusiliers sailed from Bristol to join the rest of the 29th Division who were to be part of the landing force at Gallipoli in the Dardanelles. Accompanying the battalion was Father William Finn who had volunteered to serve as a military chaplain.

Born in Hull in 1876 and one of eight children, his parents were originally from Ireland but had settled in the city’s Drypool area near to his stevedore father’s workplace on the docks. William studied to be Catholic priest from the age of 14, being ordained at Middlesbrough Cathedral before becoming a curate at Whitby and then Thirsk where he became parish priest. In 1913 he became parish priest at Sancton in East Yorkshire, serving a wealthy family at their own chapel at Houghton Hall as well as the Catholic community in nearby Market Weighton.

Within two years he would lose his life during the Gallipoli landings – one of the most disastrous episodes of the war for the Allies. The Dublin Fusiliers were part of an intended invasion force due to land on V beach at the southern tip of the Dardanelles peninsula. Strategically, it was a poor choice to attempt a landing because although there was some open beach, most of it was dominated by high cliffs rising straight out of the sea.

The plan was for a troop-carrying old steam collier called SS River Clyde to be deliberately run aground while a pontoon of barges being towed behind it would be swung around and anchored in a line to the shore allowing the soldiers to use them as a makeshift landbridge to reach the beach. The operation was preceded by a naval bombardment intended to take out Turkish defensive positions on the cliffs but it failed to inflict much damage. Instead, as the troops started leaving the SS River Clyde they ran into a hail of bullets from machine gunners high above them. Difficulties getting the barges into position added to the chaos and many men ended up drowning in the sea, weighed down by their equipment.

Father Finn was ordered to stay on the ship but watching the dead and dying in front of him he decided they needed his care and headed for the beach. There are various accounts of what exactly happened next.

One report suggests he was hit in the chest with a bullet coming down the gangplank.  Others say he suffered wounds to the arm and leg once on the beach. Despite this, witnesses said he continued his work by administering absolution to a dying soldier. However, as he did so, a burst of shrapnel inflicted a fatal wound to his head.

When news of his death reached England people were shocked as he was the first British military chaplain to die in the war. Father Finn was posthumously awarded a Military Cross but many believed he deserved to be given a Victoria Cross. It later emerged this honour was refused on the grounds that he disobeyed orders in going ashore with the men instead of remaining on the ship until it was deemed safe to disembark. His death was also commemorated in several poems and songs, most of them focussing on the priest’s heroism while glossing over the carnage.

From the battalion of 25 officers and 987 men who left Bristol on board the River Clyde, only one officer and 374 other ranks survived the initial landing. By the time they left the Dardanelles eight months later, only 11 of them were still alive. Back in Hull, the Finn family and the city’s Irish community mourned his loss.

Ten years after his death, Father Finn’s younger brother became Lord Mayor of Hull and announced he intended to personally fund the building of the Sacred Heart Church in his memory. A foundation stone and plaque laid at the start of construction can still be seen on the front of the building.

The church opened in 1927 when there were an estimated 2,000 Catholics living in the parish. Today it still stages a weekly Sunday mass and a Holy Day mass.

Angus Young

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Amos Burn should be as well known as Garry Kasparov and Bobby Fischer, according to our bygone woodpusher correspondent Phil Ascough.

If he’d been born a footballer or rugby league player, Hull-born Amos Burn would have become a household name. Years before Hull City, Hull FC and Hull KR began competing for honours, Amos was being recognised as the second-best chess player in the world. He was 16 when, in 1865, Hull FC were formed as the oldest of the city’s sporting giants. The year is also significant as the one in which he left his home city for Liverpool, where he flourished, making the most of the opportunities at a chess club which was more developed.

“With no history of chess in his family, Amos became an elite grand master in the 1890s, second only to the World Champion,” said Graham Chesters, President of Hull & East Riding Chess Association (HERCA) “I’m surprised that the chess community in Liverpool haven’t made more of the centenary of his death.”

The hope is that Amos Burn’s story will inspire others to explore and enjoy chess, and the Association marked the centenary on 25 November 2025 by partnering with Hull City Council to erect a blue plaque in recognition of his achievements. It hangs on a wall at St Clare House, a care home in Bourne Street which now sits on the site of his family home. The script reads: “Eminent Victorian chess master, son of a Hull timber broker, he became one of the world’s leading players. He was born on this site.”

The original house stood three storeys high and had a cellar but Graham admits there is little information about Amos’s time in Hull, including how much of the property his family occupied or where he went to school. Amos Senior’s occupation indicates that their address was convenient, on the doorstep of Queen’s Dock with its yards and warehouses storing timber, slate, corn, tobacco and more. Graham said: “Amos’s older brother Richard moved to the docks in Liverpool and Amos followed as an apprentice to a firm of ship-owners and merchants. All the signs are he became very successful as a businessman and by a relatively early age – late 30s – he was independently wealthy.”

Amos ended up spending quite a lot of time in London on business and that’s where he met the then world champion, Wilhelm Steinitz, a German who coached him. Graham added: “He never became a professional chess player. He set up a business in New York – they had moved beyond timber by then and were all trading in one thing or another. After that he spent his time playing chess and being a chess journalist. That’s what he focused on.”

The archives show that Amos was regularly invited to the greatest international tournaments over two decades and achieved some outstanding results at the very highest level: equal first at London in 1887; first at Amsterdam in 1889 ahead of future world champion Emanuel Lasker; second at Breslau (1889); and first at Cologne in 1898 ahead of world champion and mentor Steinitz.

As a journalist, Amos wrote about chess for the Liverpool Courier and The Field, a prestigious monthly magazine. He became known for his sharp analysis of games and for his direct reporting of tournaments in which he himself was a participant. It was whilst preparing a column for The Field with a colleague in November 1925, that Amos suffered a stroke at his home in London. He died the following day and was buried in the Margravine Cemetery, but his grave cannot be found.

The erection of the plaque in Hull was the culmination of a mobile exhibition organised by HERCA during 2025 to share details of Amos’s family, birthplace, his life in Liverpool and his career as an amateur chess master. Over the years Hull has been prominent in the promotion and development of chess. Players from the city were involved in setting up the governing body, now the English Chess Federation, and in the 1990s Hull became a serial winner of the Yorkshire League. Graham said: “We also won it in 2024 and finished as runner-up in 2025. We are sharing the lead at the moment and have been helped by an influx of Ukrainian players who came to Hull because a well-known chess coach from their country moved here before the war.”

It’s a young team, with one player just 15, others in their early 20s and more prospects coming through. HERCA has four junior chess groups in Hull and Beverley but local schools are not as active in the game as they used to be. Graham: “There was quite lot of chess activity and some strong players in Hull in the 1860s and 70s when Amos lived here but it was at Liverpool chess club where his talent emerged. Hull has been a hotbed of chess at various times in the past and HERCA’s main aim is to show the parents of juniors that a city like Hull can produce someone who could become the second best chess player in the world. He never became a professional but he was clearly an exceptional player.

“We commemorated the centenary of his death with pride. May he inspire a new generation of chess players in the city of his birth – and beyond.”

Phil Ascough

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