Advice on researching local war memorials
Robin Sampson
Dear all,
I hope you all had a good Easter and had some time in the sunshine (apart from yesterday!).
As many of you are involved in researching local war memorials, I thought you might find the following information useful (courtesy of Laura):
The War Memorials Trust has lotsof information and FAQs on memorials including information about the addition of names.
Often a memorial in the High Street is non-denominational whilst others in churches will tend to have an association with that church.
The relatives could make that choice and 100 years on it is difficult to know why a particular choice was made.
Sometimes a man will be named on every memorial in the village, sometimes on just one and sometimes on none at all. This was particularly so when the family would not give up hope of a man returning.
It is rare to find a memorial without errors and that can totally mislead a researcher if the memorial has no other details like rank or date of death.
Even correctly spelled names can be difficult eg J.Brown.
It is sometimes possible to correct names eg changing an I to a T or an E to a B. It has been known for the incorrect name to be left on the memorial and a new correct name inscribed.
Some memorials simply show initials and surnames. In these cases a lot more research is required to tie in the name to a local man.
Sometimes a non-local casualty is listed because his relatives wanted him added, or because the family moved to a new location after the date of death. This requires even more research.
Often there is no apparent order to a list on a memorial, particularly when new names were added after the event, sometimes many years later.
Best source for photographs are the family so access to a site like Ancestry.co.uk is essential.
Other sources include newspapers, school magazines, Church magazines, Squadron associations and always worth simply Googling the name.
Peter Lavender
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Norfolk Archives Network
Hi Peter,
That’s a very good point! I’ve inadvertently referred to men only as I’ve not come across any village war memorials with women noted for WWI or WWII before. It would be interesting to know how common women were included, or if this is particularly unusual for the time. As noted from the first post, the inclusion of names was down to the family, so with the Martham example it’s sad but nice to see both siblings included. Of course with later wars women will be listed more frequently.
I used to live in a village called Banstead in Surrey and the Banstead History Research Group (BHRG) has a very detailed section on the village war memorial on their website where the individual men have been researched, and a book written focussing on 34 of their stories called ‘These Men of Banstead’, as that’s actually the inscription on the Memorial itself. So there’s a few examples there of how you could present your research to the public. The BHRG website is being redone at the moment to modernise the look of it, and a new book is being produced on the Memorial with lots of updates due to 2021 marking the 100th anniversary of its unveiling.
All the best,
Laura
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