Centenary memorial service remembers 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 was remembered at a special service on Monday night to mark the centenary of the war.

The memorial service was held outside 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 service was led by the Rev Philip Niblock and those attending included 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, which numbered around 400 people, was welcomed by David Griffiths, chairman of St Michael’s War Memorial Conservation Group. Shrewsbury Cadet Band and Halfway House Ladies Choir were also there together with businesses that have supported the cleaning of the war memorial, including Morris Lubricants and funeral directors Frank Painter and Sons.

The congregation gathered around the war memorial where 72 candles were 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 drove a steam traction engine to the service and sounded 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 steam whistle, now owned by Joe Rowson of Snailbeach, was originally used at The Bog, a former lead and barytes mine near Stiperstones. Mr Rowson attended the memorial service to see the whistle in action.

The service was followed by a reception inside the Masonic Hall where refreshments were 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 is delighted with 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.

“The help and support that we have had from local businesses has been beyond our wildest dreams,” he said. “The war memorial now looks magnificent. I feel satisfied that we have restored the memorial for the next generation so that the names of the 72 who made the ultimate sacrifice 100 years ago will live forever.”

Mr Goddard, whose father, David, was one of those who laid a wreath at the war memorial, said: “It was a very poignant service and nice to see so many people come to remember these 72 men from such a small area of Shrewsbury who went to war and didn’t come home.

“Some of them worked in the buildings that we now own and I think it’s very important that we remember their ultimate sacrifice. It’s a very touching story of a war memorial that had, until recently, been forgotten.”

Colonel Thewls paid tribute to “a most brilliantly conceived” service which had brought the local community together to pay respect to the 72 young men from surrounding streets who had given their lives in the Great War.

“This event has shown the very best of Shropshire in terms of local community spirit and I am very proud to have been asked to take part,” he said.

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 Bishop 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 worked with Mr Bishop to organise the centenary service.