A FORMER East Lancashire MP and military hero forgotten hero has finally been remembered at the Houses of Parliament.

Lieutenant Gerald Arbuthnot, who represented Burnley in the Commons for less than a year, had been omitted from the marble memorials to Westminster's war dead.

Now, thanks to a sharp-eyed Parliamentary historian, the 44-year-old in action during 1916's Battle of the Somme has had his name added to the roll of honour.

Dr Kathryn Rix, from the History of Parliament Trust, had been researching the stories of parliamentarians killed in action during the war when she realised a name was missing from the memorial, known as the Recording Angel.

She had a list of 24 MPs and former MPs who had died but noticed only 23 on the memorial in St Stephen's Porch, Westminster Hall.

Her research showed the missing name belonged to Gerald Arbuthnot.

After unsuccessfully contesting the seat in 1906, he was elected as the Conservative MP for Burnley in January 1910.

However he lost the seat in December of the same year during a second election.

He chose not to stand again, but remained in politics in other ways until the outbreak of war, when he joined the Navy.

Mr Arbuthnot had served in the Navy as a young man, and at the start of the war joined the Royal Naval Reserve.

Initially with their press bureau, he felt frustrated he wasn't involved enough in the actual combat so he commanded minesweepers in the North Sea for 15 months.

Still keen to have active engagement with the enemy, he secured a commission in the Grenadier guards in January 1916.

By May, the former MP was fighting at Ypres before heading south to the Somme with the 2nd Battalion of the Grenadier Guards.

On September 25 1916, he was involved in a second attack on the village of Les Boeufs.

Lt Arbuthnot and three other officers went forward to cut through barbed wire, because it had not been sufficiently damaged by the British artillery bombardment.

Dr Rix said: "This was a job that they knew meant almost certain death. Arbuthnot and three other officers went forward. Three of them were killed."

Their efforts enabled the Grenadier Guards to achieve their objective.

Lt Arbuthnot is buried in the Citadel New Military Cemetery in Fricourt.

Despite memorial services for him in Burnley and at St Margaret's Church in Westminster, his name was never added to the Westminster memorial.

Now Dr Rix has rectified the omission and said all of Parliament's official documents and guidebooks will need to be amended.

She said: "It's really nice to have added him now. I feel very proud."