In 1997 I discovered that the original war
memorial transcription project started by Mike
Wilshin in 1985 had come to a halt after his death. I
decided to complete it and found that 50 memorials
had been published and another 80 had been
transcribed, but were in various stages of checking
and typing. Some of the memorials gave a description
and location and others did not (some had names of
the fallen and others had inscriptions as well). I
had no idea what had been checked, so I decided to
verify all the memorials that had been done, as well
as finding new ones.
The first (and logical, so I thought) step was to
contact the Royal British Legion headquarters in
Arborfield for a list of monuments in the county,
only to be disappointed - they did not have one. At
this point I decided to visit every village and hope
to find them all. As some of the memorials previously
transcribed were monuments, and some were plaques
inside the parish church, it seemed prudent to visit
every church as well. I obtained a list of all the
parish churches in the county, some 278, from the
Berkshire Record Office, photocopied my county map so
I could mark off where I had been and set about my
task.
I decided (rightly or wrongly) that the memorials
I would transcribe would be those to a war or
conflict, raised by parishes, villages,
congregations, colleagues, etc, not those to
individuals, raised by the family, and not on
gravestones, as these would be covered in time by
other projects transcribing churchyards. Also I would
only transcribe memorials containing names, not
dedication plaques on memorial halls etc. After
visiting around 60 churches I discovered that the
Imperial War Museum was working on a National
Inventory of War Memorials. I contacted the project
co-ordinator only to be told that they were
collecting memorials to individuals and those without
names. They were not, however, instigating the
transcriptions themselves, but relying on individuals
sending information. It was at this point that I
realised that the project would take longer than
originally envisaged, as I now had to revisit the 6o
churches already done. I was not disheartened (much).
As there were now several types of memorial
emerging, I decided to divide them into sections for
ease of issue. Part 1 is to inhabitants of parishes,
villages or towns and raised by their communities.
Part 2 is to individuals, raised by family, friends
or comrades. Part 3 is to members of church
congregations (other than Church of England),
schools, colleges, clubs, businesses and associations.
Part 4 is to regiments and military units and Part 5
are memorials without names. Parts 1,2 and 4, when
ready for issue will be complete apart from any
memorials I may have missed, but parts 3 and 5 will
need a great deal more work as there are many
schools, businesses, village halls still to be
visited. However, they will be issued anyway with the
memorials completed so far. I am hopeful that parts 1
and 2 will be completed by the end of the year, and
all other parts issued soon afterwards.
So, here we are two and a half years, 530
memorials, and thousands of miles travelling the
county later. My spare time has been totally consumed
by war memorials (weekends transcribing, lunchtimes
and evenings typing), not having had any time for my
other hobbies (family history, painting military
figurines, and collecting and researching campaign
medals), and still with 70 churches to visit. But the
end is now in sight.
