Website Launched with Appeal to Public

 

On 20th April, the Warwick War Memorial website was launched with a prominent article in the Warwick Courier, and leaflets distributed around the town.

The leaflets use the famous Lord Kitchener recruitment image to ask local people for help in finding the stories behind the names on the War Memorial in Church Street.

The basic military records are completed on the 358 individual pages on this website; now we want to know more about the human stories. Where did they live?  Where did they go to school? What did they do for a living?

For example, one family living in Saltisford had six sons; four of them died in the First World War, the biggest loss for a family in Warwick.

The leader of Unlocking Warwick’s War Memorial Project, Christine Shaw, says, ‘There are lots of other websites such as the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, The Imperial War Museum and so on which have some details on the military side of things. The main point of this project is to provide a focal point for Warwick that tries to show the human element in all this’.

The website will be a permanent resource, honouring those that gave their lives, but also available for use by writers, social historians, or local school projects.

Before the centenary of the Armistice is marked in November 2018, the Unlocking Warwick research team is particularly keen to find more photographs of the Warwick Fallen from the First World War, as well as personal information or letters that have been handed down through families from 100 years ago.

If you have any information about a relation who died in WWI, you can email Christine at info@warwickwarmemorial.org.uk or leave documents at the Visitor Information Centre in the Jury Street Court House – clearly marked for Unlocking Warwick with a return address.