It had recently been discovered that the grave of Private James Pitts VC in Whalley New Road Cemetery, Blackburn, had become an overgrown mess with the headstone almost lost amongst grass and two foot high weeds. Blackburn stonemason Brent Stevenson, of Brent Stevenson Memorials, immediately offered to help clear the area around James Pitts' grave. The company's willing workers, including Greg Wharf seen in the image below, cut back the grass and weeds and cleaned the headstone, which is in remarkably good condition since being erected over James Pitts' burial plot in the 1970s.

[ London Gazette, 26 July 1901 ], Caesar's Camp, Natal, 2nd Boer War, 6 January 1900, Private James Pitts, and Private Robert Scott, 1st Bn, Manchester Regiment.

During the attack on Caesar’s Camp, in Natal, on the 6th January 1900, these two men occupied a sangar, on the left of which all our men had been shot down and their positions occupied by Boers, and held their post for fifteen hours without food and water, all the time under an extremely heavy fire, keeping up their fire and a smart look-out though the Boers occupied some sangars on their immediate left rear. Private Scott was wounded

James Pitts and Robert Scott were invested with their Victoria Crosses by CinC South Africa, Lord Kitchener, at Pretoria, South Africa, on the 8th June 1902.

James Pitts died on 18 February 1955 in Blackburn and was buried in the city'sWhalley New Road Cemetery. Robert Scott died on 21 February 1961 in Downpatrick, Co Down, Northern Ireland, and was buried in Christchurch Cemetery, Kilkeel, Co Down.