A new museum – believed to be the UK’s only dedicated museum housing Battlefield Crosses from the Great War (WWI) – was formally opened on Friday 13th September 2024 by the Lord Lieutenant of Gloucestershire, Edward Gillespie.
Cheltenham Civic Society (CCS) Chair, Andrew Booton, said: “This new museum provides a permanent home for Cheltenham’s 23 Battlefield Crosses. While there are many Battlefield crosses still in existence in their ones, twos and threes in churches, cemeteries and museums across the UK, we understand that the 22 individual crosses and one other cross we still have in Cheltenham form the most significant collection in the country.
“This new museum is a simple but moving memorial which people can visit every day of the year. It represents one of the Civic Society’s most outstanding achievements – having worked closely with Cheltenham Borough Council (CBC), Pittville School, The National Lottery Heritage Fund and many individual donors, companies and volunteers over the last six years to conserve the crosses and create a permanent exhibition.”
The story of the crosses, their conservation, and the creation of the museum
1,297 men and women from Cheltenham were killed in WWI. Following soldiers’ deaths on the battlefields, they were generally buried in shallow graves close to where they fell and these were often marked by their comrades fashioning crude wooden crosses made from whatever materials came to hand. Following the war, the Imperial War Graves Commission (now the Commonwealth War Graves Commission) exhumed the bodies and reburied them with new headstones marking each grave in some 2,400 cemeteries close to the battlefields of France and Belgium.
The original wooden crosses were then sent home to the soldiers’ next of kin. Many families were not sure what to do with the crosses. But in Cheltenham, the Council created a corner of the Bouncers Lane cemetery to house them and, eventually, ‘Soldiers Corner’ became home to 230 crosses.
Out in the open for the next 100 years, the crosses took the brunt of the weather and most of them simply disintegrated as a result of long-term environmental, physical and biological damage.
In 2018, CCS member, Freddie Gick, became concerned by the poor state of the remaining Battlefield Crosses – 22 individual crosses and one other cross that in total commemorate 31 soldiers. So he then instigated a campaign to have the crosses conserved and then housed in a permanent exhibition.
In the name of CCS he sought funding and was granted £9,800 by The National Lottery Heritage Fund to have the crosses conserved by Artefacts Conservation Services. Working with local historians, principally Neela Mann, the Society involved the students of Pittville School in researching the lives of the soldiers that the individual crosses commemorated.
The investigations by the students of Pittville School brought the soldiers’ stories to life and provided much of the content of a booklet about the project that can be downloaded from the CCS website. This booklet also tells how the crosses were conserved by Artefacts Conservation Services. https://cheltcivicsoc.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Cheltenham-Great-War-Crosses-booklet.pdf
Following the research and conservation stages of the project, progress was brought to a halt in early 2020 by the Covid-19 pandemic and the crosses were put into storage at the cemetery. After the pandemic, CBC identified a former gravediggers’ hut in the cemetery, which would be suitable for conversion into a small museum to permanently exhibit the crosses.
In early 2023, CCS set about planning the exhibition and raising funds to repair the building and create the museum.
Following the formal opening ceremony, the unstaffed exhibition will 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 museum will attract many visitors in years to come, and younger generations will learn much from the experience. We’ve already seen floral tributes being laid outside the building on Armistice Day, so we would not be surprised if the museum becomes a regular focal point for such memorials.”
