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In St Wulfram's Church, Grantham, Lincolnshire.

Corporal T.A. Baker
Private C.B. Thompson
Private A.A. Royce

Berenice

Thank you for showing this unusual memorial.

Regards
Brett

PS I really do like your avatar!

Brett Hendey wrote: PS I really do like your avatar!

I'm waiting for someone to produce a t-shirt or similar with the flag design as a logo. That would be so cool to wear on holiday in the US.

It's a very interesting memorial. It's quite surprising what varied and attractive designs people came up with for Boer War memorials (e.g. Eamont Bridge) bearing in mind, as far as I'm aware, that it was the first British-involved war that resulted in a mass of memorials for the common soldier (I've only come across two Crimean War memorials that name the lower ranks).

Berenice,

Thank you for another excellent memorial.

Like Brett, I like your new avatar too!

Berenice

You're right about memorials for the common soldier. Your comment reminded me of an essay on memorialisation I wrote some years ago as part of a Masters in Battlefield Archaeology. After talking about practice after WW1 I said'Even in the case of the Boer War, where the battles were of a smaller scale, and many of the losses were due to disease, rather than fighting, the geographical links of the battalions of the regular army, and of the volunteer forces, often County Yeomanry, focused the impact of the war on certain areas and also brought its effects into homes which had not previously felt the impact of war because fighting had been done by men from other parts of society; the desire, need and ability to commemorate was therefore greater than it had been in the past. One result of this was that, with the odd earlier exception (Oliver 2005:54), for the first time it became the general practice to record the names of all the dead on war memorials, rather than just the officers.'

It's a fascinating subject and I enjoy seeing your photos.Thanks

Patrick

Patrick,

I hadn't thought about when the practice of naming soldiers on memorials began so your post added much needed information.

Many thanks
David