War memorial’s history and need for clean-up

The war memorial in St Marys churchyard is a part of the town’s history.

It records the names of those brave folk who gave their lives in the two World Wars.

Three hundred plus locals were killed in the First World War and twenty-six in the second conflict.

The memorial was unveiled back in the early 1920s and over the years the weather and pollution had taken their toll and many of the names had virtually disappeared.

Back in 2008 a campaign was started to get the memorial back into a good state.

It has been a long struggle with a good many obstacles along the way but now at least the name panels are in reasonable order and hopefully will survive the next 100 years.

The memorial was originally funded by public subscription and there were problems over where it should be located.

The original choice was the station forecourt but GWR wanted what was considerable money back in those days if the memorial was to be sited in front of the station and it meant the fund trustees had to look elsewhere.

St Mary’s Church came to the rescue.

The next difficulty was who owned the memorial.

Neither the church nor the council wanted to assume that responsibility presumably because they worried about the cost of maintaining the memorial.

That meant that during the first 80 years of its existence the memorial had little or no maintenance.

The memorial has been cleaned twice in the last 15 years, funded by the council, but for years they were reluctant, presumably because of cost, to get involved in recarving the name panels.

It was an expensive business and the search for funding was a major problem.

SEGRO came to the rescue and funded the total cost of the stonemason’s work.

The plan was that the renovation would have been part of SEGRO’s 100 years in Slough celebration back in 2020.

COVID put pay to that idea.

It is appropriate that they were involved in the project because their connection with the town came about at the end of the First World War with the coming of the ‘dump’ and the arrival in Slough of thousand of old war vehicles brought back from France for overhaul and resale.

SEGRO themselves have now become part of the town’s history and have played an important part in Slough’s growth.

The work on the memorial is not quite complete.

A soldier of the Second World War, William J Howkins, who won two medals for bravery, needs be added to the foot of the memorial.

That addition needed planning permission which has now been granted and our stonemason will be returning sometime later this year to do that last job.

Maybe I can encourage you to go along to the church to pay homage to those brave souls.

I am a regular visitor and there are names there that I can recognise.

I was at school with the descendants of the Bampton and Kipping families named on the memorial.

The memorial does look a little sad. I was there this morning, and it badly needs another clean.

The work on the panels has made the rest of the memorial look very drab.

Maybe somebody would be willing to start a campaign for that work to be done..

MALCOLM HELLINGS

Slough