NOTES ON NOVEMBER 2005 MEETING

War Memorials of the North East

In view of the close proximity to Remembrance Day, it was appropriate that the subject for the Alston Moor Historical Society’s November meeting was ‘War Memorials of the North East’. The speaker, Janet Brown, is Chairman of the North East War Memorial Project, initially sponsored by the Association of Northumberland Historical Societies, and she has been involved with this work from its beginning in 1988. The objective is to identify and register each memorial between the Tweed and the Tees. A full list of those identified will soon be accessible on a website.

The talk produced a fascinating insight into the whole range and diversity of war memorials. It was the Boer War that first caught the imagination of the public and saw the start of the practice of remembering those who fell and, in some instances, served their country. The Crimean War did not apparently engender the same sort of emotions. There is a relatively modest number of memorials relating to the Boer War but it was WWI that prompted large-scale expressions of remembrance. This was the war that was going to be over in a short time – and would be the war to end wars. Both these statements are now known to be wrong and the impact on the public was very great indeed. The number of young men - and women – lost in this futile and extravagant war was beyond comprehension and both shocked and struck deeply into the hearts of the public. Families who had not lost anyone would almost certainly know a family that had. Those who survived returned to a very different Britain to the one they had left and often found that jobs were difficult to find as many, out of necessity, had been taken over by women workers who were reluctant to give them up. Subsequent wars e.g. WWII, Korea, Falklands and the Gulf War are also remembered either by adding to existing memorials or creating new ones.

The fact that it was Government policy not to bring bodies home, but to bury them where they fell, or in communal graveyards overseas, caused much pain, and grieving relatives were looking for what we would call in modern parlance, closure. This prompted the wide spread erection of memorials and the Government suggested a levy of 1d in the £ to cover costs of erection and maintenance. The power to collect this tax still exists. There was therefore a plethora of memorials up and down the country as the public wished to give vent to feelings of gratitude to those who had fought, and fallen, on their behalf. The formal unveiling of the memorial would have been attended by family and friends and would have served as the nearest thing to a funeral that they could get.

In the North East there are over 4000 identified memorials and similarly large numbers exist throughout the country. Typically the expression ‘war memorial’ conjures up a vision of a stone edifice on a green, in a park or other open area.

Many are exactly like that but there are many more that take a different form.

There are no hard and fast rules about what can constitute a memorial. However the one very definite proviso is that a memorial cannot be a grave. They can be located indoors or outdoors. The actual form varies very widely and ranges from monumental sculpture to plaques on walls, rolls of honour, seats in parks, lifeboats, village halls, stained glass windows and even a stuffed dog in the TA HQ in Hexham! The church of St James and St. Basil in Newcastle was built by a wealthy industrialist and dedicated to, and named after, his two sons – even though there is not a St. Basil. Similarly Jesmond Parish Church is a memorial to the fallen from Northumberland and Newcastle.

A wide range of institutions has donated memorials and it is quite likely that people could have been recorded in more than one memorial. Apart from Community based memorials, many others have been donated by bodies such as working men’s clubs, Masonic lodges, sports clubs, theatrical groups, schools, trade unions, to name but a few. The Prudhoe Gleemen have a plaque immortalising their fallen members. Shepherds at Plenmeller erected a cairn on the moors as their tribute. Choirboys from Alnwick were instrumental in erecting the propeller of a WWII aircraft discovered on Cheviot as a memorial to the crew.

There is no restriction as to who can be remembered and this can lead to some difficult situations. Those who were ‘shot at dawn’ come into this category. Inclusion was usually a decision for the family concerned and often only name rank and number is recorded. There is on record the case of a woman who has two husbands on the same memorial. This was not a case of bigamy but rather having lost her first husband she re-married and then lost the second. Throughout the UK there are 46 ‘thankful’ memorials erected by communities where all the men returned safely. There are 4 such memorials in the North East.

Animals have played a significant part in war and there is a famous memorial to them in London’s Park Lane.

The inscriptions used are many and various, sometimes specific and personal but more often of a general nature. Words form the works of Kipling, Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon are often quoted but the most frequently used come from the book of Ecclesiasticus in the Apocrypha(c.200AD). The section beginning ‘let us now praise famous men’ contains the immortal words ‘their name liveth forever’ which has become the accepted standard inscription.

The next meeting of the Society will be at 7.30 pm in the Alston Masonic Hall when a talk entitled ‘Coming of Age at Kilhope’ will be given by Ian Forbes