The northernmost sector of the July 1st 1916 offensive, and particularly infamous as the location in which several of the untried 'pals' battalions were pitched against German defensive trenches that were expected to have been obliterated during the week long artillery bombardment. The German forces were in fact largely intact in deep dugouts, from which they ascended as soon as the barrage lifted at 7.30 on the morning of the 1st, and so too was the wire ahead of their trenches, carefully laid to channel the attackers into blind funnels. As the troops of the Sheffield City and the Accrington Pals Battalions, advancing from their fire trenches along the face of the copse to the left, appeared on the skyline of no man's land, they were caught in a hail of interlocking enfilade machine gun fire. The attack was only suspended after the second wave, the Barnsley Pals, had suffered an identical fate. The attack completely failed here, and indeed throughout the northernmost sector, as did a subsequent assault on 13th November.

Amongst those who lost their lives here was John Streets, a sergeant in the Sheffield Pals. He was killed going back into no-man's-land to bring in a wounded soldier.

No splendid rite is here - yet lay him low,
Ye comrades of his youth he fought beside,
Close where ye winds do sigh and wild flowers grow,
Where the sweet brook doth babble by his side.
No splendour here, yet we lay him tenderly
To rest, his requiem in artillery.
John Streets