This memorial consists of a large central panel flanked by two vertical panels that contain mens (and sometimes boys) names who had given their lives during WWI. These are topped by a pediment with written “For King & Country” which had been carried out with gold leaf, red and black paints.

All panels were extremely dirty and in a very poor condition. The right flanking panel had much of the lettering missing (see top left photo), it appeared to have been damaged by vigorous scrubbing with an aqueous solution causing the wood to ‘fur’ as it dried out. In addtion, lime and emulsion paint brush hits and splashes were present around all the frameworks.

The panels were first cleaned of years of dirt and all paint brush hits and splashes were removed. The damaged right flanking panel was prepared for reinstatement of all damaged and missing names (see top right). So the forthcoming signwriting matched the original a paint sample was taken from the existing lettering and from this a hand made paint was mixed to an exact match. All names were signwritten with this paint in the traditional manner.

All gilt lettering on the pediment and central boards was carefully retouched using hand made real gold paint to match the original, this helped to unify the then patchy gilt lettering (see above left).

A New Addition

The church had discovered for some reason that 29 names had not been originally added to the memorial. So to accommodate these additional names a panel was designed and created. This new panel was to be sited and run horizontally at the bottom and of the whole memorial when re-erected in the church.

For the new addition to be in keeping with the original the design and colour of the panel was made to match. The signwriting was to be carried out in the same style as the original using the previously hand mixed paint.

This approach of employing a combination of careful cleaning, reinstatement and restoration has now rendered the whole memorial legible and also having the 29 missing names incorporated into the whole design has produced a memorail that can now effectively convey its original message.