In Memoriam

Michael Foley pays his respects to those who have made the ultimate sacrifice

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Whenever I visit a new area, there is one thing I look out for. It is normally found in a central position and is one of the most easily recognisable and well-known monuments to be found in almost every town and village in the country. It is, of course, the local war memorial. They have become such a common part of our everyday surroundings that many people take them for granted and now barely notice them. For most of the population, they have always been there as they mainly date from around a hundred years ago.

Although they seem so much a part of British life now, before World War One they were very rare. The only military memorials around then were mainly found in garrison towns and were usually for a local regiment. The exceptions were a few Boer War memorials situated in large cities or statues of the better-known war leaders. Memorials to the lower ranks were only to be found inside churches if the families of the men commemorated paid for them.

It was only after World War One that monuments to those who had fallen on the battlefields of Europe and beyond began to appear in all areas.

The larger the town the more immense the memorial. This was because most of the monuments were paid for by public subscription.

The larger the population the easier it was to collect the money needed to build them on a grander scale. In many cases the cost ran to thousands of pounds, huge amounts for the time.