Why it took three plans and six years after the Great War ended for Derby to get its memorial

PLANS WERE SCALED DOWN FROM A £86,000 BOULEVARD AND CONCERT HALL TO A £2,500 SITE IN MARKET PLACE

- By ZENA HAWLEY

AS hundreds of people gather around the war memorial in Derby's Market Place for Remembrance Sunday tomorrow, few will realise its chequered history and that it was not unveiled until a very distant six years after the First World War hostilities ceased on November 11, 1918, and that it was very nearly not constructed at all.

At the time it was unveiled, Derby was only one of three similar towns without a war memorial -25 others had already constructed theirs.

The intentions of the borough council were promptly announced in early 1919, which said that “a fitting memorial” and also an event to welcome home the troops were a high priority. But it was to be almost six years and three plans later before we arrived at what we have in the Market Place now.

So in early 1919 it was announced that a 40ft path with associated gardens on either side of the River Derwent, from Exeter Bridge and to be known as the River Boulevard, together with a huge memorial concert hall, were being planned as Derby's War Memorial Scheme, to commemorate the town’s First World War dead.

The present River Gardens and Council House would not exist for another 15 to 20 years and so the river bank in question was rough ground at the time.

Around 2,000 people had been lost in the war and plans were drawn up by the borough council to ask people for donations towards the scheme which at that stage was estimated to cost in the region of £85,000, which equates to about £5.6 million today. By the time the plan was dropped it was estimated at almost double that - £166,000.