NEWS RELEASES
In Memory of the Fallen
8 October 2008
90 years ago the guns fell silent over the World as World War One, The Great War, ended. Some 2050 men left Horsham to serve in the forces and 359 gave their lives. How the town went about commemorating their sacrifice is told in a remarkable temporary exhibition at Horsham Museum: In Memory of the Fallen. It may have taken 90 years for Southwater to erect its own war memorial, but it took Horsham three years of quite acrimonious debate and conflict to unveil theirs. Yet even today, as the exhibition reveals, 90 years after the event, some 70 names are still missing from the memorial.
Using contemporary accounts and letters the exhibition reveals the tortuous path the War Memorial took from grand designs costing £4,000 to a £500 17 foot high runic cross. But the debate over the design and location of the memorial pale into insignificance compared with the conflict of placing the names on the Memorial. It literally split the town in two with the War Memorial Committee wanting a work of dignified art, whilst the relatives of those that fell wanted their sons mentioned; their names carved with pride. If the Memorial Committee had their way the names would have been placed on the Town Hall but the families argued they should be on the memorial. In the end, in 1929, the names were placed on a wall at the back of the memorial.
The exhibition, whilst focusing on the memorial, also illustrates the years of research that Gary Cooper has done in creating a biography of those named. Using original war diaries, newspaper accounts and family papers Gary has built up a picture of the men and their death. The results will be published in 2009; the anniversary of the official end of World War One, but to give a flavour of this monumental work the exhibition illustrates 4 lives.
It is through Gary’s research that Horsham Museum can name the 70 men from the First World War who should be recorded on the Memorial plaques. With the phenomenal rise in family history there is growing interest in War memorials and the names of the fallen. Gary’s forthcoming book published by the Friends of Horsham Museum will fill a gap.
The exhibition In Memory of the Fallen gives a hint, through contemporary local photographs and illustrations as well as rare survivals, of service life. It is not an exhibition about World War One, but about Horsham’s reaction to the sacrifice and how it should mark the event. An event which shook the nation and society beyond our comprehension and the strongly held debates that took place reveal this.
Visitors to In Memory of the Fallen will never look at Horsham War Memorial in the same way again. In Memory of the Fallen opens on 11th October and closes 31st January 2009.
For further information please contact Jeremy Knight, Curator.
Horsham Museum
9 Causeway, Horsham, West Sussex RH12 1HE
Tel: (01403) 254959 Fax: (01403) 282594
Email: museum@horsham.gov.uk
www.horshammuseum.org