The last service at Holy Trinity Church, Thruscross, was held by candlelight on Monday October 11th, 1965. The waters of the new Thruscross Reservoir were allowed to fill the valley in September 1966. The interior fittings of the church - altar, pulpit, font and stained glass windows - were incorporated in a new church built a few hundred yards uphill of the old church. Many of the bodies in the graveyard were exhumed and moved to this rather bleak enclosure next to the Greenhow Hill Road. More recently the new cemetery has seen further internments.
One of the graves moved from the old church records the memory of Thomas Renton, killed at the Battle of Dargai Hill on October 20th 1897, aged 28.
In the summer of 1897 tribesmen of the North-western frontier of India (now a part of Pakistan) began attacking and intimidating British forces in the area. The Indian Government decided that the attacks by the Afridis and the Orakzais tribesmen could not go unpunished and decided that a show of force in Tirah, the tribe’s summer home, was appropriate. Accordingly, Sir William Lockhart was ordered out from Britain and appointed to command a force of 32,882 officers and soldiers. In addition, the Tirah Expeditionary Force consisted of 8000 horses, 1440 hospital riding ponies, 18,384 mules and many camels, carts and baggage ponies.
The intention was to advance into the Chagru valley on 20 October but the Alikhel tribesmen had seen the preparation of a mountain road by the army working parties. They anticipated the route to be taken by the army and occupied the village of Dargai and the Narik spur. This formed the western boundary of the valley and completely dominated the road along which the Expeditionary Force was to descend. It was therefore necessary to dislodge the tribesmen from their position. This was a 'bloody' encounter with many casualties. The battle became famous for the award of a VC to a Scottish piper, who played on after being severly wounded.
