West Deeping remembers 1914 – 1919

Visit St Andrew’s Church in West Deeping during the next week (until 20th November) to view a display made up of some of the research for “West Deeping remembers 1914 to 1918”, a display put on four years ago In 2018.  That was when we held a Service of Remembrance for descendants of West Deeping men who served in the Great War and re-dedicated a scroll which recorded the names of all the men who had served in the Armed Forces during the Great War.

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One of the display panels tells the story of the restoration of the scroll. Included in the display are the Commonwealth War Graves certificates for each of the 12 men born or bred in West Deeping who were killed in the war.  There’s also a series of posters – stories of some of the men (and a woman!) who served in the Great War. Find out about Joseph Anstee (the miller’s son), Albert Hemsill (a baker, from 1, King Street), George Henson, (a rural postman and keen cyclist, from May Cottages), Lilian Marriott (who enlisted with Queen Mary’s Army Auxiliary Corps), “The boys from The Row” (Frederick and George  Beehoo, Edwin Black, Searle Randall, Jim Smart, James Bertie Wright, Charlie and Jack Wright) and others.

 

To find out more about the Great War period and its aftermath, get a copy of West Deeping Remembers 1919.  It contains nearly 200 pages, numerous illustrations including old postcards of the village in the early 1900s and a Roll of Honour of all those who had a part to play in the Great War.  There are details of many more characters who played a part in the life of the village, and details of where they lived, as far as can be discovered from village documents, census records and newspaper archives.

The book is on sale at the Deepings Community Library, or from 32, King Street, West Deeping – for £18.50 (plus postage and packing if required). Email wdheritage@hotmail.co.uk

 

Restored and re-sited – a memorial to West Deeping’s First World War servicemen is back on display

War memorials in the south aisle. Photo: Maggie Ashcroft

First World War Servicemen’s list rehung October 2017. Photo: Paul Bragg

First World War Servicemen’s list restored July 2017. Photo: Paul Bragg

Colin Blagove writes:

The World War 1 Service List in St Andrew’s Church has recently been restored as it has suffered from staining by water contamination over a number of years. The War Memorials Trust provided a grant for the restoration work. The memorial has now been re-hung in its new location in the Nave on the south wall adjacent to other memorials which commemorate men from West Deeping who lost their lives in the World Wars.

We would be interested in your feedback on the conservation work; we hope you agree that it’s a great improvement.

A re-dedication service will be held in the New Year. Further details to follow.

This memorial to the men of West Deeping who served in and survived  the First World War has been hanging in West Deeping Church since the 1920s.  It was an invaluable source of information for The Deepings Remember 1914 to 1918 project 3 years ago in 2014, and provides the names of most of the men who will feature in a book to be published next year – West Deeping Remembers the First World War.

The  restoration project has prompted us to find out more about its history, and the information we discovered when we took the frame apart was particularly interesting and the most helpful in establishing exactly when the scroll was created and put up in the church. See the World War 1 page (recently updated,) for more information.

The Spalding Gentlemen’s Society

We welcome Tom Grimes on Wednesday 8th February to give an illustrated talk on

300 years of the Spalding Gentlemen’s Society

7 for 7.30 pm at the Village Hall, King Street, West Deeping.

Tom may or may not mention one of the archival treasures I discovered when I first visited the library and museum of the Spalding Gentlemen’s Society. West Deeping Heritage Group was involved in its Heritage Lottery-funded project on the Stamford Canal and we were looking for illustrations of vessels on the River Welland from the period when the canal was in use.  Until then, we had only seen some pictures reproduced in black and white in The Stamford Canal, the book published by Deepings Heritage in 2005.

But here were the originals!  In a bound volume is a collection of small watercolour paintings, not much bigger than postcards and two to a page. They are each numbered, captioned and dated. The 3 below –  “The Chain Bridge, Spalding” , 1828, “The River Welland in Spalding Lincolnshire”, 1827 and “View of Spalding from the Deeping road”, 1828, include vessels under sail and fenland lighters of the type which brought goods up the Welland Navigation to the Deepings and on the canal as far as Stamford.

Each picture is initialed HB – by the artist Hilkiah Burgess. Born in Bethnal Green in 1776, his family later lived in Lincolnshire. He worked as an engraver with his father William, who was also a Baptist minister at Fleet, near Holbeach.

The collection is a treasure trove for local historians. There are several more scenes of fenland and river scenes near Spalding, but keep on turning the pages and you will also find illustrations of historical buildings and churches further afield in Lincolnshire. What a treat it was to discover the illustration of our own church at West Deeping, dated 1821!

There are several other watercolours of particular local interest –
Maxey Church, Fletland Mills, Northborough Hall, Uffington House and the “Ancient Cross at Deeping St James”.

What other treasures are to be revealed? Do join us to hear Tom Grimes talk about the history of the society, how it was formed in the early 1700s, about its  famous and erudite subscribers and the collection of artefacts, archives and literary treasures that has been built up over 300 years.

Images by Maggie Ashcroft for West Deeping Heritage Group (2013) by kind permission of Spalding Gentlemen’s Society“

Christmas Greetings

With best wishes

to all supporters of West Deeping Heritage Group

for Christmas 2015 and for the New Year

The chancel ceiling of St Andrew’s Church in West Deeping provides a wonderful image for a Christmas card!

Found on Flickr, and used with the kind permission of the photographer, N.A. Stollery