After the Great War it was decided
that the memorial to the fallen from the Administrative County of
East Suffolk should take the practical form of a new wing attached
to the East Suffolk and Ipswich Hospital in Anglesea Road, Ipswich.
The building was funded by public subscription and opened on 28
July 1924. Unlike most war memorials the names of the men and women
who had given their lives were not recorded anywhere in it. It was
therefore decided that a list should be compiled of the dead - not
just of East Suffolk but of the two Administrative Counties of East
and West Suffolk, because contributions to the Hospital extension
had been received from both counties.
A circular letter was therefore sent out in January 1923 to the
Chairmen of Parish and District Councils, inviting them to 'procure
the names of the men and women belonging to, or having associations
with your Parish', and to submit them, with details of rank, 'name
of Regiment or Ship or description of service' and 'honours or
distinctions'.
In July 1924, after a number of reminder letters had been sent, the
organisers felt that the list of names was as complete as it was
likely to be. The information received was sorted alphabetically
and written up in a volume by Graily Hewitt of Treyford (near
Midhurst) in West Sussex. Hewitt also designed the glass-topped
case in which the book was to be displayed. The case and the book
were handed over to the custody of the East Suffolk County Council
on 7 October 1930 and are now on display at Endeavour House, the
headquarters of Suffolk County Council. The Roll and its case were
paid for from the money raised for the hospital extension.
Most parishes sent in all the information they had been asked for.
However a number of places, including a large number of the
middling-sized market towns - Beccles, Haverhill, Southwold,
Newmarket, Woodbridge, Mildenhall, Felixstowe, Leiston, Framlingham
- sent in only the names, without any information about rank or
regiment having simply copied the names from the war memorial as
had been suggested:
'If your parish has a war memorial we would suggest you might
send us a copy of the names and other particulars which appear
thereon. We are aware that in some instances all the information
indicated in the form is not given on the local memorials, but we
believe that parishes would prefer that the names of all should be
included in the County Record, rather than that any should be
omitted merely because the fullest details are not
available'
It was '
difficult' or '
impossible' to
collect all the required information as the war had ended over
four years earlier, families had moved away or the people who
remained had either forgotten or might not want to remember
details. There were also many cases where identical names
occurred in the lists of more than one parish. The compilers of the
Roll decided that no man should be listed more than once, even
though he might have equally valid connections with more than one
place. Therefore where two or more places had submitted what
looked like the same name, they were written to and asked to
explain the connection with their town or village. When the replies
were received by the Secretary to the County War Memorial
Committee, he decided which place had the most plausible claim on
the man in question. He left no written guidelines as to how he had
reached his decisions, each case seeming to have been decided on
its merits.
The response to the appeal for names and information about the
Fallen was nearly 100% in East and West Suffolk. When the compilers
decided that they would not send out any more reminders, returns
had been received from all the towns and villages in Suffolk except
three. These were Kirkley, Leavenheath and Wissington. In order to
make the electronic version of the Roll as full as possible, the
names of men from these parishes have been taken from the local war
memorials and added to the Roll - just as happened with many places
at the time. In the case of Kirkley, many of the names on the war
memorial had already been sent in by Lowestoft, Pakefield or
Kessingland, and these names have been left under those places.
Similarly some of the names on the Leavenheath memorial had been
submitted by Assington or Stoke-by-Nayland.
There was one other place that did not feature in the County Roll
of Honour, the county town of Ipswich. Ipswich was a County
Borough, and quite separate from the Administrative County of East
Suffolk. The County Roll therefore did not include any Ipswich
names. Instead they were recorded separately on the Borough War
Memorial, which was unveiled in Christchurch Park on 3 May 1924.
The bronze panels behind the cenotaph contain all the information
requested by the compilers of the County Roll of Honour, and this
data has been incorporated into this electronic version of the
Roll, so that the names of men and women from the whole of the
modern county can be accessible in one database.
One result of doing this is that names appear on the Ipswich list
which seem to be identical with some submitted by parishes on the
edges of the town but just outside its boundaries - Whitton,
Westerfield and Rushmere St Andrew in particular. As there is often
no way now of proving that the names related to the same men, the
two versions have been left in the database, on the grounds that it
was better to have a man listed twice than for him not to appear at
all.
Useful links:
- Detailed research has recently been done on some communities in
Suffolk. For example, email
Rod Gibson for information on Kedington, Barnardiston, Great
and Little Wratting, Haverhill, Stoke-by-Clare and
Withersfield.
- For information about names on any Suffolk War Memorial and
more information about the Roll of Honour,
contact us.
- Local sources of information include newspapers, parish
magazines, rolls of honour and lists of local men serving in the
forces. For information on what is available
contact us.
- Records in
the National
Archive.
- Soldiers Died in
the Great War, available on CD-ROM, published by the Naval and
Military Press.
- The Commonwealth War Graves
Commission Debt of Honour database.
- The Cross of Sacrifice series of books by S D and D B Jarvis (6
volumes, based on the CWGC registers).
- The indexes of military deaths at the
Family
Record Centre
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Suffolk Record Office