THE records kept at Chester Military Museum proved vital for a Cheshire author researching her latest book.

Sheila Brady's book, Chapel Street: The Bravest Little Street in England, tells the previously untold story of the Cheshire Regiment for which she has drawn on research provided by the city's museum.

When the First World War broke out, 161 men living in just 60 lodging houses on Chapel Street, Altrincham, volunteered for duty over the following months. More than half these men enlisted in the Cheshire Regiment.

At the beginning of the war the Regiment was not organised to draft large numbers of men on short notice, so Chester Racecourse was used as a temporary headquarters. Volunteers from all over made their own way to Chester with only the clothes they stood up in to their names. They spent their first night in the army sleeping on the racecourse ground, with no shelter and thankful it was a hot August.

The book follows the men through the Cheshire battalions at the Battle of the Somme. It details the Cheshire Regiment’s famed evacuation of Gallipoli; the liberation of Jerusalem; the relief of the Siege of Kut, in what is now, modern Iraq; and the victory in Salonika on the Balkan front, which brought the war to the end.

The war saw these men collectively experience being shot, shelled, gassed, torpedoed and shipwrecked and captured as prisoners of war. More men were recorded as ‘Missing in Action’ than anywhere else, with twenty-nine losing their lives during the war and twenty soon afterwards.

King George V recognized it as "The bravest little street in England".

The book has been extensively researched using original sources and material which included: war diaries, military histories, regimental histories, courts of inquiry findings, top secret papers and many other documents available at the Chester Military Museum.

A section of the book gives useful guidance on tracing personal family military service, and the book has been endorsed by Nick Barratt of the BBC Who Do You Think You Are? series.

The book is raising awareness and funds for the charity Walking With the Wounded and its rehabilitation programs.

Chapel Street: ‘The bravest little street in England’ by Sheila Brady is published by History Press and is available from all good bookshops and online.