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| A sombre November moment as Sgt Liz Staff, of Brigg Police, and Dave Riggall, of Brigg Fire Station, approach the Monument to lay Remembrance Day wreaths. |
He is looking at war memorials and rolls of honour not only in our town but also within surrounding settlements, including Broughton, Worlaby Elsham and Saxby.
This is because Brigg Town Council is looking to set a policy in place for potential names to be added to the War Memorial (Monument) in the future.
It has been necessary to pay to register with a forces' war memorial website to undertake the research, which will involve many hours' work sifting through the records and take an estimated six months to complete.
Town Clerk Jeanette Woollard recommended that once the information had been collected, full consultation should be held with the public.
Coun Nobbs confirmed the Monument has room for further names to be included - on either end. Currently, there are plaques on the front and back of the memorial.
Information that would be useful to the Town Council include service personnel's place of birth, where and when they died, and on which memorials their names are included.
In Brigg there are church and school rolls of honour listing The Fallen, in addition to the better known Monument, erected a few years after the end of the First World War.
Some Brigg servicemen are included on Broughton's war memorial, while a good number of those on the plaque at what is now Sir John Nelthorpe School were educated in Brigg but did not live there.
Brigg Blog sees some of the key questions as including:
Do servicemen/women need to have been born in Brigg to have their names added to the Monument? What about those not born in the town who lived here for a good period of time? And what about those who went to school in Brigg but perhaps did not live here?
Coun Nobbs told Wednesday night's meeting that an Act introduced in the 1920s makes it a local authority decision whose names go onto war memorials in the UK.
Coun Mel Oades warned that they needed to be very, very careful when considering things 60-90 years later.
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| Names among the Roll of Honour on the Monument War Memorial in Brigg |
A few corrections, Nige.
ReplyDeleteThe 1923 War Memorial Act refers to the repair, safeguard and protection of war memorials by local authorities -I don't think the Act includes a clause about local authorities being responsible for deciding whose names are included on a war memorial.
There is a separate, but similar Act for Scotland
In fact, there seems to be no formal, or official information/guidance in this respect - and it could be ordinarily accepted that such information is sufficiently vague to allow the 'community' to decide/make decision.
'Community' could be defined as war vet association, the local council and other similar bodies.
The Maintenance of War Memorials
ReplyDeleteA large number of war memorials which had been erected by private subscription were subsequently handed over to parish councils, urban councils and boroughs to maintain. In order to ensure that every form of local council had the ability to raise appropriate funds to preserve these war memorials, the War Memorials (Local Authorities' Powers) Act 1923 was passed. Under the terms of this Act, as amended by section 133 of the Local Government Act 1948, the Parish Councils Act 1957 and the Local Government Act 1972, responsibility for the overall control of war memorials was vested with local authorities, who were empowered to incur reasonable expenditure for the maintenance, repair and protection of war memorials within their control. The Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973 and the Local Government and Planning (Scotland) Act 1982 also apply for war memorials in Scotland. Those powers also extend to the alteration of a memorial to enable the fallen of any subsequent war to that for which it was originally intended, to be commemorated.
Whilst the above Acts empowered local authorities to care for war memorials, they did not compel them to do so. Responsibility for the provisions of the War Memorials (Local Authorities' Powers) Act 1923 rests with the Home Office. Responsibility for the maintenance, repair and protection of individual war memorials lies with the owner, or the body in which ownership is vested.
Is the memorial a listed structure !
ReplyDelete