Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Tracking the journey of the memorial

The Churches Conservation Trust files for St James Church have been extremely helpful in tracing the journey of this memorial from Holy Trinity to the Slaughterhouse Pub. I can now say for sure that the memorial was in St James.

In 1978 a group of people visited the church and one of them noticed a wooden war memorial board laying on the stairs. They took a closer look and saw that it bore the name of  Capt. Noel Chavasse, MC & Bar. They contacted the CCT and the Liverpool Echo. Co-incidentally, the Echo had recently run some stories about Noel Chavasse.

Once their attention had been drawn to the memorial, the CCT arranged for it to be cleaned and returned to the church, they didn't know where it had been sited (It may never have been affixed to the wall) so they chose a spot for it and by Feb 1979 it was on the wall of the organ loft, facing the aisle.

There is no other mention of the memorial until a report from the architect in 1992 that whilst inspecting the damage from a break-in and arson attack, they noticed that the war memorial board had been stolen.

There were no photographs of the board but the fact that it had Capt. Chavasse's name on it, and the description of it as 'a framed wooden board' seem conclusive.

I assume that after being stolen the board was sold or dumped and made it's way to the wall of the Slaughterhouse Pub. Where did go after that? Is it in another pub somewhere, or in a private collection of war memorabilia?


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