About

The memorial was officially opened and dedicated on Thursday the 20th August 1925 and the ceremony was presided over by Lt Colonel Arthur Falkner Nicholson. During the ceremony the two memorial tablets listing the fallen of WW1 were unveiled by Frank Prime and Cyril Plant (Cyril was later killed during WW2 whilst serving with the Royal Navy), two boy scouts who had both lost fathers during the war.

Sir Arthur Nicholson and his wife Lady Marianne Nicholson presented the memorial to the town in memory of their son Lieutenant Basil Lee Nicholson (who was killed in action at Ypres in 1915, at the age of 24) and all the other local men who died fighting in the First World War. The memorial was certainly unusual at the time it was built having been paid for by a private individual and not by public donations as most other war memorials generally were at the time. At 90 feet high and with four clock faces, it is one of the largest memorials in the country.