About The West Berkshire Memorials Project
This site came about following a request from the War Memorials Trust
for help to identify war memorials in West Berkshire, in particular the
ownership and state of the memorials so that the Trust could support
repair and renovation work where necessary. The request was made to the
West Berkshire Heritage Forum of which I was, at the time, chairman.
The WBHF was keen to support the Trust in their endeavours and invited the Trust to send a speaker to address a forthcoming meeting. We felt it would be a good idea to have a rolling display of West Berkshire war memorials to be shown before the talk and I agreed to see what photographs I had in the extensive collection of photographs I have taken in my travels around West Berkshire. To my surprise I found almost 50 photographs.
In the end we decided against showing the rolling display at the meeting, but I still had the photographs, neatly collected together, surely there was something I could do with them - and the idea of a website began to take shape.
Of course, the most common interest in war memorials lies in the names thereon - so I decided to transcribe the names I could decipher from my photographs. This led to more trips around West Berkshire to gather photographs with more legible lettering, or of the side of the memorial that I hadn't photographed before. And yet more trips to add pictures of memorials I had not previously photographed.
There are still more trips required to visit the few parishes not yet photographed or to get into locked churches, but the majority of West Berkshire's readily accesible, public war memorials are recorded here in some form. I am also aware that there are more in places of work and schools that will also need a visit before this project could be considered complete.
The site also gives the opportunity to add details of the lives and deaths of the men and women remembered on these memorials. Click on Contribute if you have information you would like to see added.
The WBHF was keen to support the Trust in their endeavours and invited the Trust to send a speaker to address a forthcoming meeting. We felt it would be a good idea to have a rolling display of West Berkshire war memorials to be shown before the talk and I agreed to see what photographs I had in the extensive collection of photographs I have taken in my travels around West Berkshire. To my surprise I found almost 50 photographs.
In the end we decided against showing the rolling display at the meeting, but I still had the photographs, neatly collected together, surely there was something I could do with them - and the idea of a website began to take shape.
Of course, the most common interest in war memorials lies in the names thereon - so I decided to transcribe the names I could decipher from my photographs. This led to more trips around West Berkshire to gather photographs with more legible lettering, or of the side of the memorial that I hadn't photographed before. And yet more trips to add pictures of memorials I had not previously photographed.
There are still more trips required to visit the few parishes not yet photographed or to get into locked churches, but the majority of West Berkshire's readily accesible, public war memorials are recorded here in some form. I am also aware that there are more in places of work and schools that will also need a visit before this project could be considered complete.
The site also gives the opportunity to add details of the lives and deaths of the men and women remembered on these memorials. Click on Contribute if you have information you would like to see added.