Social History

This project gave us a chance to discover how we commemorate the casualties of World War One in our landscapes. We are all aware of memorials found in churches and other public spaces such as schools, squares or cemeteries. Once a year we remember the fallen in November and sometimes stop for a moment to look at their names.

As they have become part of our history and the landscape, some people have carefully recorded those commemorated and where to find them. We set out to record our memorials of those who died in World War One from the perspective of archaeologists.

Archaeologists look at where buildings or monuments are placed in the landscape around us. They also look at finds, large and small, reading meanings from the style and decoration on something. We wanted to look at:

• Where is the monument located? Is it in a church or a cemetery? Is it near the road? Which way is it looking? Where can it be viewed from? Or even has it been moved over the years?
• What decoration can we see on the monument? Is it a cross? Does it have interesting things carved into it? Is it in a particular style (e.g. Celtic Cross or Art Nouveau)?

We also tried find out how people decided on the memorial location and style. To do this we looked for documents in the local archives. For example, any monument in a church will have had to have special permission; we could look up the minutes of the committees that granted permission.

This gave us a chance to tell the story of our memorials. During this process we made a film revealing the discoveries that our project made. It also got to the heart of what these memorials mean to us today.