A historian is calling for help to find the battalion colours of the Bradford Pals, which have gone missing from Bradford Cathedral.

The flags representing the first and second Bradford Pals, which became the 16th and 18th battalions of the West Yorkshire Regiment, were hung by a side door in the cathedral in the early 1920s.

Ralph Hudson, who wrote a history of the two battalions, said the colours were taken down when a kitchen was built in the late 1980s and their whereabouts were now unknown.

He said: “The whole idea of hanging these flags was to preserve them. To take out something that has been hung in a cathedral is the same thing as digging up somebody’s tombstone. I find it quite sick.”

The Bradford Pals, made up of men from across the city who enlisted at the start of the First World War, were involved in intense fighting at the Battle of the Somme in July 1916.

The Dean of Bradford, the Very Reverend Dr David Ison, has conducted a thorough search for the colours.

He said: “We have asked around to see what’s happened to the colours and no-one seems to know. We would be very glad to know what happened to them as we fear they may have been lost.”

The colours of the Bradford Pals territorial battalion remain in the cathedral.

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