Long-lost WW1 Memorial rediscovered at School in Suffolk returns to Royal Greenwich on Armistice Day
On Tuesday 11 November, a group of pupils from the Royal Hospital School, in Suffolk, will travel to the original site of their School in Greenwich, London. They take with them six oak boards naming 151 former pupils who attended the School between 1889 and 1918 and lost their lives during WW1.
The School party will include twelve Year 8 boys and girls, two drummers and a bugler, all of whom will be dressed in their ceremonial naval uniforms as they parade the boards to the Queens House where a wreath will be laid, followed by the Last Post and a two minute silence.
The boards make up a former War Memorial measuring 13ft by 6ft, which originally hung in the Great Hall of the Queens House, Greenwich with the inscription “In Proud Memory of Those Old Boys who fell during the Great War, 1914-1918, Lest we Forget”. They were brought to Suffolk in 1933 when the School relocated to its current 200 acre site overlooking the River Stour. Some sixty years ago the boards were reused as honours boards and the original names were hidden. On 17 December 2013, they were rediscovered in a disused garage at the School and when a veneer was removed, ghosted outlines of the names of the fallen were revealed.
Linked to this discovery, Mr Mann is coordinating a four year research project with current pupils at the Royal Hospital School. This will take place in partnership with local primary schools, archivists and historians to reinstate all of the names on the memorial boards as their biographies are retrieved.
Amongst the names on the boards, it has been discovered that the youngest boy listed was Charles Ernest Timmins, a 14 year old from Kent who was the bugler aboard HMS Cardiff. Timmins lost his life in 1917 whilst alerting his ships company during one of WW1’s most famous battles at Heligoland. He was killed when a piece of shrapnel from a shell blew a hole in his ship’s funnel and pierced his bugle.
Following up on this Mr Mann explains; “We have located Timmins’ bugle on a Type-45 Destroyer, HMS Dragon, and in acknowledgement of this important historical link the Royal Navy will sound the Last Post on board HMS Dragon as RHS pupils play at the Queens House in Greenwich and at the School in Suffolk.”
Turning to the wider research initiative Mr Mann goes on to say, “This is a wonderful opportunity for young people to discover the wider heritage associated with our remarkable School’s involvement in the Great War. It has been estimated that around 11,000 former pupils of the Royal Hospital School served with His Majesty’s Forces in one capacity or another, with undoubtedly the highest number of naval losses from any one school, estimated at over 500. Our pupils will be researching the circumstances surrounding their loss, their background, their families and personal legacy; so that we might all gain an understanding and appreciation of the ripple effect that the War had on families and communities”.
The project will symbolically last the duration of the First World War, 100 years on, completing on 11 November 2018 and it has been endorsed and supported by the National Maritime Museum. This all links in directly with Rozanne Hawksley: War and Memory open until 16 November at the Queens House, with the creative responses of the Royal Hospital School pupils also being displayed in the reception of the National Maritime Museum over the next four years.