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| Chester-le-Street
District Council Our War Memorials in 2000 |
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This website provides electronic access to part of the Our War Memorials in 2000 exhibition, which toured Chester-le-Street and district in the autumn and winter of 2000/2001. The exhibition was prepared by a group of volunteers with the support of a Millennium Awards for All grant. The exhibition was opened by the Chairman of Chester-le-Street District Council, Councillor Ian Wilson, following the two minutes silence on Saturday 11th November 2000 at 11 am in Chester-le-Street Civic Centre.
It was recognised that the exhibition could not cover all of the remaining memorials or record all those people they remember. Like the exhibition this website tries to show how various memorials differ in design and how dramatic even the ordinary and most basic of them can be. These contrast with the high craftsmanship and artistic detail of the more expensive commissions. However, most importantly, the memorials were seen as a communal undertaking as Gavin Purdon, chairman of the War Memorials 2000 Group, recorded : The war memorials of local communities were rarely the work of the civil or military powers. No great national census gathered in the names of the fallen to serve as dependable directories of those to be listed on local monuments. No government funds were set aside to meet the costs of community memorials. No official guidelines curbed or shaped the popular outburst of memorial plans. By and large war memorials were a community’s own business. All manner of local groups got together in schoolrooms, clubs and parish meeting halls to tackle the job themselves. Solemn invitations appeared in shop windows among the everyday adverts for lodgings, lost pets and piano lessons. Anyone knowing the identity and service details of local persons who lost their lives in the late conflict were respectfully requested to apply within. As gathered lists grew long enough to fill a plaque, a bit of land and a piece of stone were found. Or else indoors someone undertook to carve the wood, weave the tapestry or put ink to vellum with a skilled hand. Here and there, one way or another, ways and means were found to make memorials. Typically, local tastes were conventional not controversial. The poets and painters of the day vented their anger at the war in bitter words and images. Memorial builders were more constrained. There was no intention to accuse, protest or shock. Even so the larger a community group the wider the spectrum of opinion it had to suit. The form and language chosen was a delicate matter. The meaning of the memorial had to leave enough to the eye of its beholder. The same long list of local surnames could be viewed both as a necessary sacrifice and a tragic waste. The stone cross set above the names was a revered emblem and likewise the grim grave marker set by the million on countless godforsaken scenes of devastation. It was the community war memorial’s hallmark not to offend, disappoint or alienate its public. As many people as possible had to stand before it and see enough of their own thoughts and feelings reflected there. The Our War Memorials in 2000 exhibition recorded an age that we all hope has passed, but which needs to be remembered. However, looking after the memorials, keeping records of how they were designed and built and researching the histories of those recorded on them is an ongoing task.
For further information about the exhibition, and the research behind it, contact :
E-mail: |
Behind the exhibition was the recognition that, at the start of the
twenty-first century, Chester-le-Street and its district still had a wealth of memorials
from the conflicts of the twentieth century. With the arrival of a new
century, perhaps it was all the more important to recognise that the people who survived
those conflicts made the effort to remember those who did not.