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| A previous parkrun visit to Sewerby in 2011 |
I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith (2 Timothy 4:7).
Unfortunately St. Paul had not been introduced to the concept of a `non-competitive Saturday morning time trail'!Well that was the first part of the day which took us up to Sewerby Park for a 9am parkrun (see www.parkrun.org.uk). So after a 5 kilometre running blast along the scenic East Yorkshire coastline, it was down to the business of seeing what evidence there was of the interplay between Christianity and National Identity in the War Memorials in the area.
Sewerby
Our first stop was the conveniently situated memorial in the churchyard of St. John, Sewerby. Unusually, in addition to commemorating those who lost their lives in the two major wars of the twentieth century, the inscription celebrated the allied victory of 1914-1919:
THIS STANDS FOR A WITNESS
OF THANKSGIVING FOR PRESERVATION DURING
THE GREAT WAR, A
SYMBOL
OF FAITH IN A NEW WORLD, WHEREIN WARS SHALL
BE NO MORE, AND A
TOKEN
OF UNDYING MEMORY OF THOSE WHO GAVE THEIR LIVES
Poignantly, that faith in a new world of no more wars was shown to be shattered by the addition of a further naval casualty listed from the 1939-1945 war.
Flamborough
A short drive to Flamborough, home of the famous lighthouse, followed where the war memorial was not placed in the churchyard, but adjacent to the remains of a fortified medieval manor house.
The names on this memorial seemed to follow no particular order or pattern, and it was unusual to see it positioned neither in the churchyard, or prominently in the centre of the village. Perhaps the existence of a memorial to the crew of a lifeboat which had been wrecked in 1909 already prominent in the village square encouraged the people of Flamborough to keep the two separate, in order for them both to receive their due attention.
Bempton
In over a decade of holidaying in the Bridlington area as a child in the 1970s and 1980s, I had never visited Bempton. However, this was to prove the highlight of the day. In the strikingly tall and imposing memorial in the churchyard of St. Michael, the inscription was written:
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| War Memorial, Bempton, East Yorkshire |
IN GRATITUDE
TO THE MEN OF BEMPTON AND BUCKTON
WHO FELL IN THE GREAT WAR 1914-1919
GOD AND THEIR COUNTRY CALLED THEM
BUT THEIR NAMES SHALL LIVE
Therefore the juxtaposition of the call of the country, into the armed services, and the call of God, through to the afterlife shows the importance attached to the idea of World War One being essentially a Christian endeavour against evil. One unusual aspect of this particular memorial was the addition in 1951 of a Bempton man who had been killed in the Korean War.
We stepped inside the church and I was deeply struck by a particular stained glass window. It was installed in 1962:
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| Memorial to Private Arthur Moore, St. Michael's, Bempton |
It depicts St. Francis feeding the seabirds, with the right hand panel showing the birds to be circling the cliffs of Bempton. The artist was Harcourt Medhurst Doyle and the window was given forty-six years after Moore's death in France on 15th July 1916 by his sisters, Annie, Jane and Maud. The text chosen to billow across both panels is from Matthew 6:26:
BEHOLD THE FOWLS OF THE AIR
YOUR HEAVENLY FATHER FEEDETH THEM
My imagination has led me to wonder if Arthur was a keen ornithologist, which would make the beautiful memorial to both his passion in life, and the passion of his early death all the more moving. His body has either never been recovered or identified and his name is inscribed on the Thiepval Memoral in the Somme.
Bridlington
Onwards to Bridlington, and the Memorial Garden in the centre of town.
As well as the commanding main memorial to the men who had died in the First and Second World Wars.
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| War Memorial, Bridlington |
The texts separate out the Land Forces and Sea Forces for the First World War and list the warships the navy men served on, very striking for a fishing port. The bronze plaques by S.N. Babb have helped to earn the cenotaph Grade II Listed Building status. The photograph above is of a winged angel of victory standing over two slumped soldiers. The sculpture on the other side (shown below) is of a sailor armed with a revolver standing on a ship's deck over a slumped flag and a cannon to the rear. Again, the depiction of a sailor on a war memorial is relatively unusual.
One touching aspect of the memorial garden in Bridlington is that it has been in the process of being constantly reused and regenerated to meet the needs of succeeding generations since its opening in the early 1920s. From the addition of the names from the Second World War to the main memorial, through to the commemoration of significant war anniversaries and the ability of local individuals and groups such as Bridlington Trinity AFC to instal a stone in the garden, this means that it continues to live in the collective mind of the town.
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| A shrine to which the people of Bridlington have added personally inscribed crosses for the men who have fallen |
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| A 50th Anniversary Dunkirk Veterans Memorial |
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| A moving inscription on a bench, commemorating the reunited of a soldier buried in Italy in 1945 and his wife who died in 1993. |
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| Memorial to the players of Bridlington Trinity United A.F.C. killed 1939-45 Note the panel underneath depicting the footballer volleying the ball skywards.
So the first part of our day had been so much more than driving around the Bridlington area thinking, `that's a good memorial; so is that one, and that one.' We had seen themes; the importance of the sea in the positioning and ordering of the content of the memorials, the positioning of some people not just as soldiers or sailors, but as bird-watchers, footballers and men waiting for their widows to join them five decades later, and the continuing rebirth and renewal of the memorials. If they become lumps of stone and bronze standing by the roadside or in churchyards then then become an insult not only to the people who are commemorated on them, but also to those who paid to have them erected, to those who over the past century have wept and worshipped and wondered in front of them, and most pertinently for today's generation, an insult to ourselves as Britons.
I am very pleased to report that the people of Bridlington and District respect, revere and renew their war memorials. And so on to the inland Yorkshire Wolds...
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