How Did It All Start
How Did It All Start?
In 1988, a letter appeared in the Times newspaper from the head of the Imperial War Museum suggesting that a list of war memorials be drawn up, as so many had been moved, or were in need of repair. The late Prof. Norman McCord suggested that this would be a good project for the Association of the Northumberland Local History Societies. The Association had fifty local history societies as members, from Northumberland and Newcastle upon Tyne. There were also individual members.
The project was launched almost immediately, and the results started to come in. Janet Brown was secretary of the ANLHS at that time, and became coordinator of the project. Six months after they started, Janet received a telephone call from the Imperial War Museum. They had heard that the project had started and wanted to know if they could pick ANLHS’ brains!
After five years, the ANLHS decided to call a halt, and handed over what had been done to the Northumberland Record Office, with copies sent to the National Inventory of War Memorials at the Imperial War Museum. The National Inventory has since changed its name to War Memorials Archive. The ANLHS has also ceased to exist. Having spent 50 years working on its aim to establish local history societies in the county, the society was formally closed in November 2016.
St John’s Chapel : Image courtesy of Lonely Tower Film & Media
Holy Island : Image courtesy of Lonely Tower Film & Media
However, from 1993, Janet continued to work on the project on a private basis, because it was far from finished. A great deal of information had been her own work, as was the layout and presentation. Then she received a telephone call from the Imperial War Museum saying that they were proposing setting up a similar project in County Durham – would she be prepared to help if they managed to get a group together? The group was set up, and produced a similar corpus of work. Simon Raine had been compiling his own records for some time and contributed these to the project.
In 2004 the two projects covering Northumberland, Newcastle upon Tyne and Co. Durham were combined and became the North East War Memorials Project. The Project officers were Janet Brown (Chair), John Dixon (Treasurer), Dorothy Hall (Secretary) with members James Pasby, Mavis Dixon, Tony Harding and Colin Sanders.
