War Memorials – Epsom Urban District
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Epsom Urban District’s Roll of Honour, 1914
(Close-up images of the entries are shown below)
Photograph courtesy of Clive Gilbert © 2015
In July 2015, the Mayor’s secretary was tidying some cupboards when she came across a framed Roll of Honour, dated 1914, as pictured above.
As noted in the first Council minute extract below, this aimed to be a list of all Epsom men “serving the country in the forces of the Crown”. It is not a memorial to the fallen – although the list does note that (W.) A. Foulger had been killed in action, his death at the age of 20 being on 21 November 1914. Others of the 600 or so listed are certain to have died subsequently during their war service – for example A. C. Zander, about a third of the way down the final column above, was killed in action on 9 April 1917, aged 22.
The minutes of the Epsom Urban District Council’s meeting 17 November 1914 contain the following item:
WAR: Roll of Honour.
The Council decided to take steps to provide a Roll of Honour of men serving the country in the forces of the Crown, from the Epsom Urban District.
There is another minute, a week later, dated 24 November 1914 which reads:
ROLL OF HONOUR.
The Chairman of the Council reported that Mr. G. T. Langridge was kindly assisting in securing information for the completion of this list.
The framed Roll of Honour records about 600 names, some of which, for reasons unknown, have been struck out. The names are arranged alphabetically but are not necessarily alphabetical within an individual letter. Furthermore, the alphabetical list, having reached the letter Z in the final column (recording A. C. Zander as mentioned above) commenced again from ‘A’ – but then going only as far as the letter C, with H. Claydon (who survived the War) being the last entry.
As no other references have been found in Council minutes to the Roll of Honour, it is possible that only the one board was produced. In the early days of the Great War it was generally thought that it would “be over by Christmas”, and it may be the magnitude of the task of gathering all the names of volunteers was grossly under estimated led to the task being abandoned.
But perhaps another board will surface one day!
A list of all those from Epsom who died during their Great War service in the forces was eventually compiled for the purposes of the Ashley Road memorial.
Clive Gilbert August 2019
Extended by Roger Morgan August 2019
Each of the fourteen close up images below is, in order, half of one of the seven columns in this 1914 “Roll of Honour”.
Close-ups of Epsom Urban District’s Roll of Honour 1914
Photographs courtesy of Clive Gilbert © 2015