With an exhibition telling the lives and deaths of 15 of a church's congregation who did not survive the Great War finishing today, reporter Douglas Patient looks into the stories of some of the men.

The exhibition, entitled Our 15: Remembered Lives, tells the story of the 15 names engraved on a stone plaque in the north aisle of Wanstead United Reformed Church, in Nightingale Lane, Wanstead.

Frederick Aylott, born in 1896, lived in New Wanstead before his family moved to Cowley Road, Wanstead.

Employed by Great Eastern Railway aged only 15 in May 1910, Mr Aylott worked loading parcels from trains to horse-drawn carriages at Snaresbrook station, then working as a gate supervisor at Leytonstone station.

In January 1916, he enlisted into the army and survived until the last couple of months of the war, being killed in the Second Battle of Bapaume in August 24 1918 aged 22.

His elder brother, Thomas, survived the war but died only two years later from tuberculosis, believed to have been caught from the trenches.

Nathaniel Saunders, born in 1891, also grew up in Cowley Road and was employed as a plumber.

In 1916 he enlisted as a gunner in the Royal Field Artillery and on November 30 1917, his unit was part of the offensive against German fortified defences at Cambrai in Northern France.

In the German counter-attack Mr Saunders was killed aged 27 and his body was never found.

Albert Parks, born in November 1897, had moved to Redbridge Lane, Wanstead, with his family in 1911 and two years later at the age of 16 he was working as a warehouseman in Paternoster Square near St Paul's cathedral.

After joining the Royal Flying Corps in 1915, Mr Parks became a flying instructor training pilots at Upwood Aerodrome in Oxfordshire.

On June 3 1918 he married Violet from Leytonstone, but it was only three months later when he died aged 21 in a flying accident after the engine stalled.

Margaretha Pollitt Brown, a member of the church who started the project, said: “The exhibition has given us the sense the church is at the heart of the community and was there for support throughout the war and the aftermath.

“It was not just the effect the war had on the soldiers who died, there was family left behind and it is moving thinking that the congregation was cut by 15.

“We found some really interesting stories and characters, we could not have done it without all the church members getting involved in the research."

The exhibition closes today but will open again from April 19 to May 10 next year to mark the centenary of the deaths of the first two men who were killed in April 1915.