34 C O N T E X T 1 3 7 : N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 4 and meeting halls and, if they might be included here, churches or church extensions. Even new roads and bridges were mooted as appropriate memorials. Most numerous (although, as so often, quantification is difficult) of the buildings put up were the memorial halls which appeared in towns, cities and especially villages across the land in the early 1920s. Again, the initiative often came from those who had been away on war service – women munitions workers as well as servicemen – who had become used to urban standards of leisure provision and were no longer prepared to spend every evening sitting at home. A few, like that at Shrivenham (Wiltshire) in the arts-and-crafts style (1921–5; listed Grade II), were architecturally ambitious, or at least aspired to permanency and a degree of politeness. Most, however, were modest affairs, and ex-army huts were a favourite (and cheap) option. Many still stood, much adapted and improved, until 10 or 20 years ago. Since then, higher customer expectations and the support of the Heritage Lottery Fund have seen most replaced by something much swankier. Hut-halls which have survived with little alteration are now extremely rare, and would be possible candidates for designation. Parks, gardens, playing fields and avenues also fell into the category of living or useful memorials, offering, in the words of one dedicatory speech, a place where ‘all people, young and old, could enjoy the beauties of nature in lovely surroundings, near to the centre of the town’. Such a choice often reflected a lack of open space or sports facilities in new urban areas or in villages. Numbers are unclear, but a project is soon to start, hosted by Parks and Gardens UK, to compile a national gazetteer. There are currently 339 gardens and 212 parks or playing fields listed on the ImperialWar Museum’sWar Memorials Archive, and more are coming to light all the time. At a national level, Fleetwood Memorial Park (Lancashire) and CoventryWar Memorial Park are both included on English Heritage’s Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest at Grade II, as is Rowntree Park,York, which was originally dedicated as a memorial park after the first world war.Also registered is Nottingham’sWar Memorial Gardens, opened in 1927, the ornamental core of a wider park with recreation grounds and school playing fields donated by Sir Jesse Boot in 1920. Tracts of countryside, too,were gifted inmemory of the fallen, to open up access and to preserve their character and views. Perhaps most celebrated was the purchase by the Fell and Rock Climbing Club of the English Lake District of 1,200 hectares of fellside, including Great Gable, and its gift in 1923 to the NationalTrust inmemory of the club’s war dead.There are many other examples: Midsummer Hill (on the Herefordshire–Worcestershire border), Box Hill (Surrey) andTurn Hill (Somerset). If first-hand memory of the individuals who served and fell in the first world war is now dimmed, this extensive memorialisation – by way of crosses, village halls and fellside – nevertheless remains a daily reminder of the shocking impact that the war, and later conflicts, had on individual families, and society in general. Collectively, we have a duty of care towards them, never more so than over the next four years. Additional funding for war memorial conservation In December 2013 prime minister David Cameron announced new funding of £5 million to conserve, repair and protect first world war memorials and burial sites, and to enhance understanding of these through interpretive resources. The funding, which has come from the LIBOR fines, is for one-off, time-limited support for war memorials and burial sites during the centenary period. In addition, there is an extant commitment to develop a single web point of public access for information and advice about the conservation and repair of war memorials throughout the UK. Following further discussions, in July the prime minister announced the allocation of £4.5 million funding to a partnership of English Heritage, the War Memorials Trust and Civic Voice to deliver: •• First world war memorials in the best possible condition for the centenary. •• More money in direct grants for war memorials, and the resources to deliver it and encourage take-up. •• Volunteers engaged with their war memorial heritage, stimulating projects related to research, protection and conservation. •• Better protection for war memorials through statutory listing. •• A larger pool of skilled and trained specialists to repair memorials appropriately through the centenary and to maintain them beyond it. •• Improved public understanding of, and engagement with, war memorials through a single web portal; and clear and simple access to information, advice and grant availability. •• An authoritative war memorials national register. •• Improved support for public engagement in the recording and research into memorials and the people they commemorate. •• Grants for schools to research memorials, and wider appreciation of the importance and local significance of community-based war memorials. •• A lasting legacy of improved war memorials data and better access to information, advice and funding for the public. References English Heritage has remembrance web pages which include guidance on getting a memorial listed and on its publications which can guide the maintenance and repair of war memorials. The ImperialWar Museum’sWar Memorials Archive (formerly the UK National Inventory of War Memorials) is at www.ukniwm.org.uk. Two recent publications treat the different types of open space gifted as memorials: English Heritage’s War Memorial Parks and Gardens and the Garden History Society’s supplementary volume of Garden History, titledMemorial Gardens and Landscapes: design, planting and conservation. Paul Stamper is a senior adviser in the designation department at English Heritage. Thrapson’s Peace Memorial Park, purchased by public subscription in 1920
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