CHORLEY'S only recipient of the Victoria Cross is to be commemorated in his home town -- 86 years after his death.

A plaque is to be unveiled on St Laurence's Parochial School building, Parker Street, where William Mariner, who died on the battlefields of France, went to school.

Mr Mariner was born in Wellington Street, Chorley, on May 29, 1882. He joined the 2nd King's Royal Rifle Corps in 1902.

In the First World War he was posted to France. It was near Cambrin on May 22, 1915, that he took part in an action which led to him being awarded the VC when he single-handedly disabled a German machine gun emplacement. He left his trench and crept through the barbed wire before climbing on to the gun parapet and throwing a grenade at the machine gun.

He lay hidden in no-man's-land for an hour while the Germans opened heavy gun fire around him before he could crawl back to his own trenches. He was invalided back to England for a time but returned to France in October, 1915, and was killed, aged 34, during an attack near Loos on July 1, 1916.

He has no known grave, but his name is on the Thiepval memorial in France, along with 72,084 other British soldiers who died on the Somme and whose bodies were never found or identified.

Nothing is known of any surviving relatives of Rifleman Mariner or of the whereabouts of his VC.

Hazel Yates, honorary secretary of Chorley Civic Society, said: "His name does not appear on the list in Astley Hall. The society is anxious this omission be corrected and has decided to honour Rifleman Mariner with one of its plaques."