War Memorial Plaque attached to 35 Lower Dagnall Street

Summary

War memorial plaque, unveiled 1921.The dwelling to which the plaque is attached is excluded from the listing.

Reasons for Designation

The war memorial attached to 35 Lower Dagnall Street, St Albans, unveiled in 1921, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
* Historic interest: as an eloquent witness to the tragic impacts of world events on this community, and the sacrifices it made in the First World War;
* Rarity: as a rare commemorative plaque, which offer a relatively private memorial compared to the usual more public monuments often placed in prominent locations;
* Group value: as one of eight surviving memorials forming a significant and rare group.

History

The concept of commemorating war dead did not develop to any great extent until towards the end of the C19. Prior to then memorials were rare and mainly dedicated to individual officers, or sometimes regiments. The first large-scale erection of war memorials dedicated to the ordinary soldier followed the Second Boer War of 1899-1902, which was the first major war following reforms to the British Army which led to regiments being recruited from local communities and with volunteer soldiers. However, it was the aftermath of the First World War that was the great age of memorial building, both as a result of the huge impact the loss of three quarters of a million British lives had on communities and the official policy of not repatriating the dead, which meant that the memorials provided the main focus of the grief felt at this great loss.

The war memorial attached to 35 Lower Dagnall Street is one of forty war memorials in St Albans, dedicated to those who fell in the First World War and one of ten mounted on houses in the Abbey Parish of St Albans. Those mounted on houses were unveiled in 1920 and 1921 to commemorate more then 110 men who came from a small group of streets clustered around the Abbey. Those who went to war from these streets were men of the parish of St Albans Abbey. It is not clear where the idea for St Alban’s street plaques came from but Canon George Glossop, who served the abbey for 40 years until 1925 certainly promoted the plan. Locally they are known as The Canon Glossop Memorials. Records indicate that Abbey curate, The Rev Harry Evans, made street collections to fund the scheme. Generally plaques are mounted on a house from which a man was lost. Following the dedication of the first memorial in Albert Street in the spring of 1920, the next three plaques in nearby Bardwell Road, Pageant Road and Sopwell Lane were dedicated in summer the same year by the Bishop of St Albans, Dr Michael Furse. The remaining memorials were completed and unveiled in 1921.

Details

The stone memorial comprises a rectangular tablet rising to a central apex with a shallow hood running the length of the tablet. An inscribed cross sits central to the apex. The whole memorial is set into the front wall of 35 Lower Dagnall Street* and is inscribed with names of those who lost their lives in the First World War.

The inscription is laid out in two columns, that to the left reads: ‘WELCLOSE STREET/ FREDERICK DAY/ LOWER DAGNALL STREET/ CHARLES EARWICKER/ JAMES HAWES/ WILLIAM KALABZA/ ARTHUR KENDAL/ STANLEY SCRIVENOR/ FREDERICK THOMPSON/ ARTHUR WIGGS/.'

The column to the right reads:'COLLEGE PLACE/ ERNEST HAWES/ FREDERICK PEACOCK/ GEORGE PEACOCK/ TEMPERANCE STREET/ GEORGE ADAMS/ ANDREW CHIEZA/ CHARLES DAY/ ERNEST HALSEY/ HENRY HILLIARD/'. Spanning the bottom of both columns are the words 'FOR REMEMBERANCE'.

*Pursuant to s.1 (5A) of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 (‘the Act’) it is declared that the dwelling that forms 35 Lower Dagnall Street is not of special architectural or historic interest.


This List entry has been amended to add sources for War Memorials Online and the War Memorials Register. These sources were not used in the compilation of this List entry but are added here as a guide for further reading, 12 January 2017.

Sources

Books and journals
Word on the Street in SPAB, (Summer 2014), 71-73

Websites
War Memorials Register, accessed 12 January 2017 from http://www.iwm.org.uk/memorials/item/memorial/62234
War Memorials Online, accessed 12 January 2017 from https://www.warmemorialsonline.org.uk/memorial/64136

End of official list entry

All text content is available under the Open Government Licence v3.0 , except where otherwise stated. Any supplied maps are © Crown Copyright [and database rights] 2026 OS AC0000815036 and may not be reproduced without permission.

Print the official list entry