The parish council petitioned to correct a memorial to the dead of WWII in the church porch, after research suggested that three of the twelve names on the memorial were incorrect.
The PCC had concerns about physically altering the current memorial, but petitioned with an alternative of a third tablet to address the mistakes in the existing tablets. The DAC did not object to the PCC's petition, which was subsequently withdrawn, but declined to recommend the original proposal. The petition of the parish council was objected to by both the PCC and by several individual parishioners. One such objector indicated a wish to become a party opponent, though he had since died.
The court rejected arguments that it lacked jurisdiction. First, it concluded the monument was in the church porch and so within the faculty jurisdiction. Secondly, it considered section 1 of the War Memorials (Local Authorities Powers) Act 1923, and found that the power for local authorities to incur reasonable expenditure on a war memorial did not confer a power on them to undertake works in the absence of a right or permission to do so.
In relation to the petition itself, the record of ‘Herbert Toulson’ was probably in error for ‘Towlson’. There was no evidence that the individual named ‘Joseph W Wade’ used his middle name ‘Valentine’; although there was no evidence either way, the use of the letter W was more likely to have been deliberate than a mistranscription of V. The civilian memorialised as ‘Vivian Castle’ was recorded as elsewhere both as Vivian and Vivien; the middle name Maud was omitted from her grave memorial as well as the war memorial, and was probably not omitted in error. There was no evidence that those who knew and loved the dead showed any dissatisfaction with the memorials as erected.
Having considered the 2007 guidance from the then Department of Constitutional Affairs ‘War Memorials in England and Wales: Guidance for Custodians’, and the advice to the petitioners from the War Memorials Trust, the court concluded that there was no general rule or presumption that errors on memorials should be corrected by changing the memorial. In any event, it could not be said that the use of a name other than a full, legal name was an error. The court also expressed concerns as to the intrusive nature of the proposed alterations in terms of extent and typography.
The court concluded that a war memorial was not a record of those commemorated, but an act of memorial made by those who knew the dead, and that act of remembrance demanded respect in its own right. There was no need to make the suggested alterations, no widespread or well-supported desire to do so, and no known way in which they could be made satisfactorily. The court refused to grant a faculty. [Jack Stuart]
