Museum of 'Battlefield Crosses' opens in Cheltenham

The UK’s only dedicated museum of WW1 'Battlefield Crosses' made by comrades of the dead has opened, according to a report in 'Gloucestershire Live'.

As members of The Western Front Association know, most burials were initially marked by wooden crosses made from whatever materials came to hand. Following the war the Imperial War Graves Commission made the standard headstones that we see in cemeteries today. 

Often the original wooden crosses were then sent home to the soldiers’ next of kin with many families were not sure what to do with them.

But in Cheltenham the council created a corner of Bouncers Lane cemetery to house some of these crosses and a small exhibition has been converted from a former gravediggers’ hut at the cemetery.

Cheltenham Civic Society (CCS) Chair, Andrew Booton, said: “This new museum provides a permanent home for Cheltenham’s 23 Battlefield Crosses. While there are many Battlefield crosses still in existence in their ones, twos and threes in churches, cemeteries and museums across the UK, we understand that the 22 individual crosses and one other cross we still have in Cheltenham form the most significant collection in the country."

Out in the open for the next 100 years, the crosses took the brunt of the weather and most of them simply disintegrated as a result of long-term environmental, physical and biological damage. In 2018, CCS member, Freddie Gick, became concerned by the poor state of the remaining Battlefield Crosses – 22 individual crosses and one other cross that in total commemorate 31 soldiers.

Working with local historians, the Society involved the students of a local school in researching the lives of the soldiers that the individual crosses commemorated. The investigations by the students of Pittville School brought the soldiers’ stories to life and provided much of the content of a booklet about the project that can be obtained via from the CCS website 

Report courtesy of Phil Norris, Gloucestershire Live