A MEMORIAL stone in the name of a young Tottington soldier which was unearthed on a building site is to find a new home at his wife's grave.

Lancashire Fusilier William Yates died in action more than 80 years ago. He was just 26. Now, his great nephew, Mr Graham Wilkinson, who lives on Market Street, Tottington, and his family plan to return the tablet to St John's churchyard, alongside his wife Ivy's.

The discovery of his stone by builders constructing the new David Lloyd leisure centre on the site of the former Bolton Royal Infirmary last month sparked a memorial mystery. And parishioners of St Anne's Church, Tottington were determined to reunite the granite tablet with the late soldier's family.

The inscription read: "Sacred to the memory of William, the beloved husband of Ivy Yates, of 14 Holcombe Road, Tottington, who was killed in action in France, January 5th 1918 in his 27th year." They found out that William, known as Billy to his family and friends, was a print worker. At the age of 24 he married 22-year-old Ivy Wilkinson, a cotton weaver, at St John's Church, Tottington on February 26 1916. The couple never had any children and in 1920, two years after Billy died, she remarried. Ivy died in 1952, along with her second husband, and his second wife. William's name is also mentioned at the bottom of the headstone.

Graham, a sub-master at Greemount Post Office, said he remembers being told of Private Billy Yates as a small child when he used to lookat his grandmother's old photographs. He still has a copy of Billy and Ivy's wedding picture and an embroidered card the soldier sent ot his wife from France shortly before he died.

"But we can't understand why his stone came to be in Bolton. We don't believe he had any connection with the hospital," said Graham.

He believes the stone could have stood in St John's churchyard until Ivy died in the 1950s and was replaced, leaving the original stone to be scrapped and used as hardcore under the hospital building.

William was killed near Loos in France - just ten months before the war ended, but his body was never found. His name is one of the 20,000 inscribed on the Loos Memorial of soldiers who have no known grave.

The tablet found in the soldier's name will be cleaned and restored by monumental stonemasons, Rawsons, who have also offered to reinstate it in the graveyard free of charge.

"We couldn't have just thrown it way," said Graham.

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