Welcome

In the years immediately following the First World War a massive programme of memorial building took place across the whole of England. In almost every parish in the country stone monuments, graveyard memorials and obelisks inscribed with the names of the fallen were erected to commemorate the losses that the parish had suffered.

Today it is these memorials that remain the focus for all annual commemorations. However, these stone monuments formed only one part of the process of commemoration that took place in the post-war years. Alongside these formal reminders to the fallen were many hundreds of more discrete and personal memorials to the losses suffered by these communities. These memorials could take many forms; from the rededication of a local amenity, such as a village hall, to the keeping of a Roll of Honour or ‘Flanders Cross’ within the parish church. Many of these less formal memorials now lie overlooked and unrecorded, with their significance forgotten to the wider population, and their removal and loss remains a very real threat.

This project aims to survey and record these ‘hidden’ memorials in the Waveney area, bringing them to wider attention, and preserving this truly hidden history of commemoration. The project aims to share the information gathered with a variety of groups. The digital archive will be made freely available through this website, and as a permanent record it will be accessible to academics, professionals and those with a legal responsibility for the care of these monuments, potentially safeguarding them for the future.

It is early days for both the project and the website; the project itself will run for the duration of the centenary and developments will be recorded via the news section, along with any stories that are uncovered, More information and sections will be added as teh project progresses including map data in the form of GIS (Geographical Information Systems) to locate each item we find. Please keep an eye out for developments by calling back.