Kingsland War Memorial

Summary

First World War memorial, erected around 1920, by WG Storr Barber.

Reasons for Designation

The Kingsland War Memorial is listed at Grade II, for the following principal reasons:

Historic interest:

* as an eloquent witness to the tragic impact of world events on the local community, and the sacrifice it made in the First World War;
* one of six memorials, internationally, which include a dedication to nurse Ethel Saxon, who died in service in India.

Architectural interest:

* a well-executed example of a wheel cross memorial.

Group value:

* with the Grade I-listed Church of St Michael and several other listed monuments.

History

The aftermath of the First World War saw the biggest single wave of public commemoration ever with tens of thousands of memorials erected across England. This was the result of both the huge impact on communities of the loss of three quarters of a million British lives, and the official policy of not repatriating the dead. Memorials, therefore, provided the main focus of the grief felt at this great loss.

One such memorial was raised at Kingsland as a permanent testament to the sacrifice made by 26 members of the local community who lost their lives in the First World War. It was designed by WG Storr Barber. No date for construction has been found, though typically, war memorials in small settlements such as this were funded by public subscription, and were built in the few years immediately after the war.

William George Storr Barber (active 1908-1920s) was a monumental mason and sculptor originally based in Leominster. There, he carved the statue of St Ethelbert (1908) for the Catholic Church, as well as restoring the Old Town Hall (1909). He seems to have moved to the capital sometime between then and the early 1920s, for his statue for Leominster’s war memorial (1922) was modelled in his London studio. He was responsible for a number of memorials in the Hereford and Worcester area, including Craven Arms and Kimbolton.

The memorial includes a dedication to Staff Nurse Ethel Saxon, who died in service in India in 1917. Saxon was born in 1891 in Monmouthshire, and trained as a nurse in Liverpool. On the outbreak of the war she joined the Territorial Force Nursing Service, and was posted to Karachi, then part of India, where she died of acute appendicitis. She is commemorated on the Delhi Memorial (India Gate), India, on the nurses memorials at Liverpool Cathedral and York Minster, at the Snatchwood Road Methodist Church, Abersychan, Wales, in the Frodsham Methodist Church, Cheshire, and here in Kingsland, where her parents settled in their retirement.

Details

First World War memorial, erected around 1920, by WG Storr Barber.

MATERIALS: limestone.

DESCRIPTION: the monument stands within the churchyard of St Michael’s Church, approximately 45m east of the chancel. It comprises a wheel cross with tapering shaft on a roughly-hewn tapering plinth and two-stepped base. The lower step of the base is of rusticated blockwork.

One face of the plinth is polished stone with an inscription in applied lettering: ‘TO THE GLORY OF GOD / IN GRATEFUL REMEMBRANCE OF / THE HEROES OF THIS PARISH / WHO FELL IN THE GREAT WAR / 1914 – 1919 / BY THEIR DEATH WE LIVE’, followed by the names of the dead.

Sources

Websites
Imperial War Museums, War Memorials Register: Kingsland, accessed 23/11/2018 from http://www.iwm.org.uk/memorials/item/memorial/33142
Commonwealth War Graves Commission, Archives, accessed 23/11/2018 from https://www.cwgc.org/find-war-dead/casualty/1437817/saxon,-ethel/
Frodsham Methodist Church, Staff Nurse Ethel Saxon 1891-1917, accessed 23/11/2018 from http://www.frodshammethodist.org/church-blog/staff-nurse-ethel-saxon-1891-1917
Women, Wales and War, The Experiences of Women in World War One: Ethel Saxon, accessed 23/11/2018 from http://www.menywodarhyfel.cymru/search.php?func=search&searchfor=TFNS&in_unit=on#prettyPhoto

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