Never assume that your war memorial will always be where you think it is. This is Esher war memorial, these first few pictures taken some fifteen years ago.
The Great War panels (above & below),…
…and the Second World War panels – well, three of them, at least.
And here, this photo taken from the same spot as the first picture in the post, we have Esher war memorial today, this and the following shots taken last summer during the drought. Look carefully in the foreground and you can still just about see the indentation of the memorial’s base, because this is where it stood for the best part of a century.
And now, all of a sudden, it’s here.
The 1939-1945 panel on the right in this picture, incidentally,…
…slots in here, because it has only been on editing these pictures that I realised that I hadn’t taken a head-on close-up of it on either visit.
This shot shows the memorial’s original site in the background in front of the wooden stakes, and the reason for its move.
People kept hitting it! That’s a busy junction behind, even though it may not look like it here, and a war memorial limiting visibility evidently proved a recipe for too many accidents.
So now it stands here, in splendid isolation in the centre of the park. And all’s well that ends well.
I have photos somewhere of the moving of 2 Sutherland war memorials. Golspie and Loth. Both were on corners literally of A9 which was built following route of horse and carts . Remembrance services became too dangerous so Loth was relocated to the local churchyard and Golspie got a piece of land and repositioned the memorial there. Both safe from modern trucks and campervans!
And very nice it is too. I’m glad you explained the move, I was edging towards an alien conspiracy to start with lol. Funnily enough the one in the village of Shobdon, where my parent live, was moved a few years ago for the same reason. It’s now in the centre of the village green, which strikes me as a far better location than its original site on the outskirts. Apart from anything else it means the remembrance Sunday service can take place without fear of people getting run over, something that probably wasn’t a consideration when it was originally placed by the main road.
Thank you both. I am sure that people getting run over during the services had something to do with it too – Esher is one of those places that you have to go through to get elsewhere, so the whole place would shut down for Remembrance Sunday with queues of cars in every direction.