Centenary memorial service to remember 72 Shrewsbury men killed in Great War

The ultimate sacrifice made by 72 men from a small area of Shrewsbury who lost their lives in World War One will be remembered at a special service to mark the centenary of the war on August 4.

The memorial service will be held at the Old St Michael’s Church in Shrewsbury, which is now the Masonic Hall for the town’s Lodges. Outside the former church stands a war memorial dedicated to the 72 servicemen killed in the Great War who all lived in a small area stretching from Castle Foregate to the Flaxmill in Shrewsbury.

The 7pm service will be led by the Rev Philip Niblock and those attending will include Colonel Edmund Thewls, Vice Lord Lieutenant for Shropshire, Shrewsbury’s Mayor Councillor Mrs Beverley Baker, blood relatives of some of the late servicemen and standard bearers from the Royal British Legion and military regiments.

The congregation will be welcomed by David Griffiths, chairman of St Michael’s War Memorial Conservation Group. Shrewsbury Cadet Band and Halfway House Ladies Choir will also be attending together with businesses that have supported the cleaning of the war memorial, including Morris Lubricants and funeral directors Frank Painter and Sons.

Following the service, the congregation will gather around the war memorial where 72 candles will be extinguished in recognition of a comment made by Sir Edward Grey, British Foreign Secretary, at the outbreak of WW1: "The lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our time."

The candles were made by a team from Morris Lubricants at Blists Hill Victorian Town, one of the Ironbridge Gorge Museums, especially for the service as the company’s founder, James Kent Morris, first set up in business as a grocer and candlemaker in Shrewsbury in 1869.

Morris Lubricants’ managing director Andrew Goddard will also drive a steam traction engine to the service and sound a steam whistle to mark the start and end of a period of silence followed by a bugler playing ‘The Last Post’ and‘Reveille’ and a wreath laying ceremony.

The memorial service will be followed by a reception inside the Masonic Hall where refreshments will be supplied and served by the town’s Tesco store.

A driving force behind the service and cleaning of the war memorial is Ken Bishop, a member of St Michael’s War Memorial Conservation Group, who praised the support he has received.

He first began the campaign five years ago when two local residents asked him to lay a tribute to their relatives during his visit to the battlefields of the Somme. He discovered that Sapper Charles Cotterell of the Royal Engineers and Corporal Frederick Churms of the King’s Shropshire Light Infantry died on the same day and are both listed on the war memorial.

“I feel very satisfied to have been involved in something that remembers the ultimate sacrifice these 72 men from a small area of Shrewsbury made 100 years ago,” said Mr Bishop, adding that the memorial service is open to anyone who wishes to attend. “Had they not succeeded, the world might have been much different place today.

“Our campaign aimed to restore the war memorial and raise public awareness to ensure that these men will never be forgotten. Everybody that I have approached has come forward with support and Morris Lubricants, in particular, have been unbelievable in the way they have responded.”

Last November, 72 men and women lined up outside the Morris Lubricants’ headquarters in Castle Foregate to represent those that lost their lives in the Great War. Some of the servicemen worked at the former Thomas Corbett Iron Works before they went to war.

Mr Goddard was moved to action after meeting Mr Bishops and hearing about the forgotten war memorial, built by public subscription in 1921. As a first step, he pledged to pay for the memorial to be cleaned and the company has worked with Mr Bishop to organise the centenary service.

“It’s a very touching story of a war memorial that had, until recently, been forgotten and the magnitude of the fact that 72 men from such a small area of Shrewsbury went to war and didn’t come home,” said Mr Goddard. “Some of them worked in the buildings that we now own and I think it’s very important that we remember their ultimate sacrifice.”