South Yorkshire Times February 3, 1951

Kilnhurst Sportsman and Ex-Soldier

The rugged personality of Mr. Cresswell Sykes, soldier and sportsman and for 43 years a steelworker, will be missed in Kilnhurst.

This Boer War veteran, who side tracked the medical profession and chose the Army, died in a Rotherham hospital on Sunday at the age of 82.

Penistone will remember Cresswell Sykes as a young medical student and exponent of the art of knur and spell: he kept his apparatus to the last at his home at Highthorn, Kilnhurst. But the sportsman and his young wife, the late Mrs. Agnes Jane Sykes, were lost to Penistone when Cresswell Sykes answered the call to South Africa. He became a “regular,” trained at Trinity College Hospital, Dublin, and served for 20 years in the R.A.M.C. He was at the relief of Mafeking, and saw 16 years’ service in South Africa as an N.C.O.

His return to Penistone was short lived, for after a short spell with Cammell Lairds. he moved to Kilnhurst and started his 43 years’ service with Messrs. Baker and Bessemer.

At the outbreak of the 1914-18 war, although over age, Mr. Sykes rejoined the R.A.M.C. In 1917 he was discharged when it was found he was over 50.

Cresswell Sykes the charge-hand retired in 1941 at the age of 73 and spent his remaining day at No. 1, Highthorn, Kilnhurst. Mrs. Sykes died in 1924 and the surviving family of three sons and a daughter attended the funeral at Kilnhurst on Wednesday.