Cheltenham’s remaining WWI Battlefield Crosses will soon have a permanent new home following Cheltenham Civic Society’s (CCS’s) recent success in raising more than £10,000 for the project.
CCS member, Colin Smith, led the fundraising campaign and secured donations from a range of local organisations, companies and individuals – including £2,000 from Gloucestershire County Council’s Build Back Better Councillor Scheme (via Cllr Tim Harman) and £1,000 from the Honourable Company of Gloucestershire Charitable Trust.
With most of the funds already received, work started last month on damp proofing the former gravediggers’ hut at the Bouncers Lane cemetery provided by Cheltenham Borough Council for the exhibition.
Following the damp-proofing work, the building will be redecorated and have a solar PV panel and battery installed to provide lighting controlled by movement sensors (there being no electricity supply). The crosses will then be hung along with explanatory information panels giving details of the soldiers.
The work is expected to be completed by the summer, after which a formal opening ceremony will be held. The exhibition will then be open to the public every day of the year during the normal cemetery opening hours.
“Just being in the presence of these crosses is a deeply moving experience,” said CCS Chair, Andrew Booton. “They allow us to come within a heartbeat of the young soldiers they commemorate.
“We think the exhibition will attract many visitors in years to come, and younger generations will learn much from the experience. In fact, we’ve already seen floral tributes being laid outside the building on Armistice Day.”
THE BACKGROUND STORY
When soldiers died on the battlefields of Europe during the First World War, their comrades often marked where they fell with crudely-made wooden crosses using whatever was to hand. Following the war, the War Graves Commission reburied the soldiers in cemeteries with each soldier given a headstone. The wooden crosses were then returned to the soldiers’ next of kin.
Some 1,297 men and women from Cheltenham were killed. After the war, the Bouncers Lane cemetery provided a corner where families could place the crosses. By 1928 there were 230 of these wooden crosses in place in what became known as ‘Soldiers Corner’.
But, out in the open with no substantial protection from wind, weather and decay, many of them slowly disintegrated. When they came to the attention of CCS member, Freddie Gick, in the late 2010s, there were just 22 remaining.
He led a campaign by CCS to conserve the 100-year-old crosses with funding from a National Lottery Heritage Fund grant. CCS also involved the students of the nearby Pittville School, who undertook research into the lives of the soldiers.
The investigation by the students of Pittville School brought the soldier’s stories to life and provided much of the content of a booklet about the project that can be downloaded from the Civic Society’s website. This booklet also tells how the crosses were conserved by Artefacts Conservation Services.
The Covid pandemic that hit the UK in early 2020 prevented CCS from following up the conservation of the crosses with the creation of a permanent home for them. But that work resumed last year after the cemetery provided the gravediggers’ hut.
This brick-built hut is now being converted into a permanent exhibition. It will be a simple but moving memorial which people will be able to visit at any time during the cemetery’s opening hours, 365 days each year.