Westfield War Memorial Village (established 1924) is a residence in the City of Lancaster, England. Initially created for ex-service men, women and families after World War I, it continues to provide accommodation for 189 residents.
After the Great War, a national debate was ignited concerning how disabled servicemen from the Great War would support themselves and their families if they could not return to their former trade because of their disabilities. Local newspapers also promoted the idea that 'the nation owes a debt it should be eager to discharge as far as that is possible'.
It was from a strong backing of public support, including financial help and assistance in erecting the Westfield village, that a Committee for the promotion of a memorial village upon the Westfield site was appointed at Lancaster Town Hall in 1918, using the ideas of Thomas Mawson. In 1919 the Westfield Committee obtained charity status for the project, and published a brochure advertising their intentions, appealing for funds and organising an inaugural ceremony. The brochure explained the benefits and aims of the Westfield scheme, which were to erect a memorial, build cottages for the married disabled ex-servicemen, found a hostel for the unmarried men, and provide workshops and social amenities. It also claimed the village would not just meet difficulties of 'social reconstruction – the problem of the hour' but also provide a model of town planning on a small scale for the imitation of other towns. The local connection of the village is reflected in the proposed allocation system – Disabled veterans of the Kings Own Royal Regiment would have first refusal, followed by those of Lancaster District, with all overtones of charity to be strictly avoided. Herbert Storey believed that this memorial village should stand as a tribute to the gallantry and devotion of the men of this regiment and of Lancaster men and women of other branches and services.
Within three weeks of the Armistice, 11 November 1918, Ashton Hall hosted a crowded meeting to decide how Lancaster should commemorate those who served in the Great War. Its concluding resolutions were that a permanent memorial should be established in Lancaster to those who had fallen. The Westfield War memorial village grand opening was 27 November 1924, with the war memorial statue being unveiled two years later; 4 August 1926. It commemorated all those who gave their lives or limbs for their country in the Great War, in particular the men of Lancaster, who served in the King's Own Royal Regiment (Lancaster). Thomas Mawson, a renowned Landscape Architect born in Scorton, near Lancaster, derived the idea of memorial villages to commemorate the fallen in war from an article he read by William Hill, and expanded on this basic principle to include not just housing for the disabled ex-servicemen returning from the war, but also to give them employment in specially built workshops. This was a key addition, due to it being likely in a number of cases that the injuries sustained from war would hinder the ex-servicemen returning to their old occupations, and in some cases make it impossible.
Criticisms of the idea
Two key criticisms had arisen from the idea of a village for returning servicemen. The first was that 'inevitably a time would come when there would be no disabled people to live in the village, which may then become derelict'. The other was that the disabled ex-servicemen would not want to be segregated, nor wish to be placed in surroundings which would remind them daily of the Great War. This criticism in particular was taken up by the Ministry of Pensions, who had been unenthusiastic about Mawson's idea from its beginning.
However, after overwhelming support and offers of assistance, the Westfield Committee was set up, and it soon became clear these two criticisms were not going to stand in the way of the erection of the village. This committee was made up of members such as the Mayor and Mayoress, councillors, Lords and Ladies, prominent local businessmen, members of the armed forces, reverends and doctors. This strong committee guaranteed the success of the scheme in Lancaster because they were able and willing to give financial support to the scheme. The Westfield Committee was also able to gain the support of such women as Mrs Lyell who had the time to dedicate to fundraising for the village. Mrs Lyell organised fundraising events such as what became known as 'The Lyell Golden Ballot', that raised over £20,000 for the village, which funded the erection of 31 cottages, including Lyell Terrace.
The bodies that did prove hindrances to the Westfield Committee were the government, the Ministry of Labour and Trade Unions. The government's refusal of finance for the erection of the village, which was one of Thomas Mawson's 'must haves' was the main issue for the Westfield memorial village to go ahead. However, funding by donation proved to be enough to combat this problem. The Ministry of Labour began in the mid-1920s to restrict the output of the workshops to the promotion of building related skills, as opposed to making such things as watches, pipes and umbrellas which had been progressing steadily. Then, when hostility from local businesses and Trade Unions hit the workshops, they eventually had to be closed down. Local newspapers were constantly in support of the Westfield village; regularly publishing articles promoting the idea, such as one in the Lancashire Daily Post in November 1918 entitled "The Nation owes a debt it should be eager to discharge as far as that is possible".
World War II
War memorial
The Second World War had an effect on the Westfield Village, as interest was once again renewed in it, and also a few extra tenants were placed on waiting list from that war.
Statue memorial
The statue memorial in the centre of the village illustrates one soldier giving water to a wounded comrade, illustrating Lancaster's recognition of the efforts and sacrifices made by the men of Lancaster serving in the King's Own Royal Regiment. The sculpture is by the local artist and teacher Jennie Delahunt and was unveiled in 1926.[1][2]
Today
The Westfield war memorial village still exists today, with a waiting list of people wishing to move into the houses in the village; the war memorial statue still stands prominently in the centre of the village. Funding for the erection and maintenance of the village stems completely from donations made by the public. The village was leased in 1987 to a housing association for finance to modernise the houses. Priority is still given to those families of war victims.
Each house in the village has today a plaque outside the front door with information regarding a particular battle or an individual who fought in the war, or a group of fundraisers who paid for the house to be built; in particular the first house built bears the name of Herbert Storey, who gave the Westfield land so that the project could go ahead. The greenery that is present all throughout the village, including the trees which line the streets, each of the gardens owned by their respective houses, and the bowling green signifies healing and rehabilitation, to which it was hoped would aid the recovery of the ex-servicemen living there, as planned by Thomas Mawson. Finally, facilities such as the bowling green and the social club were established as a sign of the effort made to help reconstruct the lives of the ex-servicemen, and also as a gesture of thanks from the people of Lancaster.
Further reading
Books
Mawson, Thomas Hayton, An Imperial Obligation: Industrial Villages for Partially Disabled Soldiers & Sailors (London, Grant Richards Ltd, 1917)
Mawson, Thomas Hayton, The Life and Work of a Landscape Architect – An Autobiography of T.H. Mawson (London, The Richards Press, 1927)
Manuscripts
List of tenants, former unit, date of entry, rent paid & number of children. (Westfield War Memorial Village, Lancaster, 2 August 1930)
Newspaper and magazine articles
"The War Memorial Village, Westfield Lancaster", Lancashire Daily Post, 14 November 1919
"At the going down of the sun...", Lancashire Life, October 1958, pp.52–71
"Memorial Village offered new start for war injured", Lancaster Guardian, 15 November 2002, p.3
Pamphlets
The War Memorial Village Lancaster: To the Officers: Non-commissioned Officers & Men of the Kings Own (Royal Lancaster) Regiment and to all those men and women of Lancaster and District who gave their lives in the Service of King and Country during the Great War 1914-1918 (Lancaster, The War Memorial Village Committee, 1918)
Lancaster VE 2005: "A Community Remembers" (Lancaster, 2005)
The War Memorial Village, Lancaster, (Lancaster, 1943)
Presentations
Stretch, M, "The War Memorial Village Lancaster", 2001.
The Thiepval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme is a war memorial to 72,337 missing British and South African servicemen who died in the Battles of the Somme of the First World War between 1915 and 1918, with no known grave. It is near the village of Thiepval, Picardy in France. A visitors' centre opened in 2004. Designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, Thiepval has been described as "the greatest executed British work of monumental architecture of the twentieth century".
The Royal Artillery Memorial is a First World War memorial located on Hyde Park Corner in London, England. Designed by Charles Sargeant Jagger, with architectural work by Lionel Pearson, and unveiled in 1925, the memorial commemorates the 49,076 soldiers from the Royal Artillery killed in the First World War. The static nature of the conflict, particularly on the Western Front, meant that artillery played a major role in the war, though physical reminders of the fighting were often avoided in the years after the war. The Royal Artillery War Commemoration Fund (RAWCF) was formed in 1918 to preside over the regiment's commemorations, aware of some dissatisfaction with memorials to previous wars. The RAWCF approached several eminent architects but its insistence on a visual representation of artillery meant that none was able to produce a satisfactory design. Thus they approached Jagger, himself an ex-soldier who had been wounded in the war. Jagger produced a design which was accepted in 1922, though he modified it several times before construction.
The Cross of Sacrifice is a Commonwealth war memorial designed in 1918 by Sir Reginald Blomfield for the Imperial War Graves Commission. It is present in Commonwealth war cemeteries containing 40 or more graves. Its shape is an elongated Latin cross with proportions more typical of the Celtic cross, with the shaft and crossarm octagonal in section. It ranges in height from 18 to 24 feet. A bronze longsword, blade down, is affixed to the front of the cross. It is usually mounted on an octagonal base. It may be freestanding or incorporated into other cemetery features. The Cross of Sacrifice is widely praised, widely imitated, and the archetypal British war memorial. It is the most imitated of Commonwealth war memorials, and duplicates and imitations have been used around the world.
The Armed Forces Flag Day or the Flag Day of India is a day dedicated to India towards collection of funds from people of India for the welfare of the Indian Armed Forces personnel. It has been observed annually in India on December 7 since 1949. Over the years, it has become a tradition to commemorate this day as an honour to the soldiers, sailors and airmen of India.
The Department of Soldiers' Civil Re-establishment was established by the Dominion Government of Canada in 1918 to handle the major problem of returning Canadian servicemen to civilian life after the First World War. In 1928 it merged with the Department of Health to form the Department of Pensions and National Health, with its former responsibilities being carried out by the Pensions Division.
The Irish National War Memorial Gardens is an Irish war memorial in Islandbridge, Dublin, dedicated "to the memory of the 49,400 Irish soldiers who gave their lives in the Great War, 1914–1918", out of a total of 206,000 Irishmen who served in the British forces alone during the war.
Blesma, The Limbless Veterans is a British charity that helps all serving and ex-Service men and women who have lost limbs, or lost the use of limbs or eyes, to rebuild their lives by providing rehabilitation activities and welfare support. It operates throughout the United Kingdom and is a registered charity.
The Sydney Cenotaph is a heritage-listed monument located in Martin Place, in the Sydney, Australia. It was designed by Bertram Mackennal and built from 1927 to 1929 by Dorman Long & Co. It is also known as Martin Place Memorial and The Cenotaph. It is one of the oldest World War I monuments in central Sydney. It was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 11 November 2009.
During World War I (1914–1918), Ireland was part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, which entered the war in August 1914 as one of the Entente Powers, along with France and Russia. In part as an effect of chain ganging, the UK decided due to geopolitical power issues to declare war on the Central Powers, consisting of Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Bulgaria.
The Pozières Memorial is a World War I memorial, located near the commune of Pozières, in the Somme department of France, and unveiled in August 1930. It lists the names of 14,657 British and South African soldiers of the Fifth and Fourth Armies with no known grave who were killed between 21 March 1918 and 7 August 1918, during the German advance known as the Spring Offensive, and the period of Allied consolidation and recovery that followed. The final date is determined by the start of the period known as the Advance to Victory on 8 August.
The Carnforth War Memorial was erected on 9 November 1924, to commemorate soldiers from Carnforth who died during and after World War I.
The Morecambe and Heysham War Memorial stands on the Promenade at Morecambe, Lancashire, England.
The World Veterans Federation (WVF) is the world's largest international veteran organisation. The federation consists of 172 veterans organizations from 121 countries representing some 60 million veterans worldwide.
Manchester Cenotaph is a war memorial in St Peter's Square, Manchester, England. Manchester was late in commissioning a First World War memorial compared with most British towns and cities; the city council did not convene a war memorial committee until 1922. The committee quickly achieved its target of raising £10,000 but finding a suitable location for the monument proved controversial. The preferred site in Albert Square would have required the removal and relocation of other statues and monuments, and was opposed by the city's artistic bodies. The next choice was Piccadilly Gardens, an area already identified for a possible art gallery and library; but in the interests of speedier delivery, the memorial committee settled on St Peter's Square. The area within the square had been had been purchased by the City Council in 1906, having been the site of the former St Peter's Church; whose sealed burial crypts remained with burials untouched and marked above ground by a memorial stone cross. Negotiations to remove these stalled so the construction of the cenotaph proceeded with the cross and burials in situ.
Monuments aux Morts are French war memorials established to commemorate the losses of World War I. After the end of the 1914–1918 war there was a frenzy to build memorials to commemorate those who had been killed and it has been calculated that in this period well over 36,000 individual memorials were erected throughout France with the majority of these being built between 1919 and 1926. These memorials are known as monuments aux morts - literally monuments to the dead and what are known in the United Kingdom as war memorials.
The Fremantle War Memorial is a war memorial located on Monument Hill, an 11-acre (4.45-hectare) public reserve and hill in Fremantle, Western Australia. The memorial itself comprises a large obelisk, the Fallen Soldiers' and Sailors' Memorial, surrounded by eight smaller memorials. The site, located on High Street near the centre of Fremantle, overlooks Fremantle Harbour, and was established by the Fremantle Town Council in 1928 to commemorate the losses of the First World War, having been used as a public reserve since the early 19th century.
The Welsh National Memorial Park is a war memorial in Langemark near Ypres (Belgium) for soldiers of World War I, located near the Pilkem Ridge in the former Ypres Salient. It commemorates the services of men and women from Welsh origin(Wales), wherever they served during the Great War as part of the Allied Powers, as well as the non-Welsh soldiers serving in Welsh formations.
The African and Caribbean War Memorial in Brixton, London, is the United Kingdom's national memorial to African and Caribbean service personnel who fought in the First and Second World Wars. It originated with a project for a memorial to Caribbean Royal Air Force veterans of World War II who arrived in Britain in 1948 on the MV Empire Windrush; this was an extension of the commemorative plaque and sculpture scheme run by the Nubian Jak Community Trust to highlight the historic contributions of Black and minority ethnic people in Britain. The memorial was originally to have been placed at Tilbury Docks, as part of the commemoration for the centenary of the outbreak of World War I. However, as the project began to evolve into a larger tribute that included both World Wars and commemorated servicemen and women from both Africa and the Caribbean, it was agreed by the memorial recipient – the Port of Tilbury – and the project organisers that a new, more accessible location needed to found. The memorial was ultimately permanently installed and unveiled on 22 June 2017 in Windrush Square, Brixton.
The York and Lancaster Regiment War Memorial is a war memorial to members of the York and Lancaster Regiment, in Weston Park, Sheffield, England. It was erected in the park in 1923 to commemorate the 8,814 members of the regiment who died in the First World War. The original inscription reads:
Annie Bindon Carter (1883–1969) was a British entrepreneur, businesswoman and philanthropist.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
