New Website Launches To Immortalise Surrey’s Great War Story

Published on: 18 May, 2016
Updated on: 19 May, 2016

People with stories or photographs of Surrey in the First World War are being urged to help create a lasting digital memorial to the county’s role during the conflict.

The homepage of the website Surrey in the Great War: A County remembers.

Surrey Heritage, part of Surrey County Council, has launched a new website to document the experiences of Surrey residents during the Great War – both on the home front and battlefields overseas.

Over the next three years, the website aims to publish thousands of stories about Surrey towns, villages, organisations and individuals to serve as an enduring record of the county’s contribution to protecting Britain 100 years ago.

The website is the centrepiece of Surrey in the Great War: A County Remembers, a four-year First World War commemoration project launched by Surrey Heritage and funded with a grant of almost £460,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund, which was announced last year.

People of all ages from Surrey and beyond are invited to post memories, photographs, letters and records chronicling the impact of the war years on the county.

They will also be able to search through the website’s records from the period including indexes to local newspapers to find out more about wartime life in the county.

Volunteers from communities across Surrey will be encouraged to add the names of men and women listed on the county’s hundreds of war memorials and tell their individual stories where possible.

As well as preserving the heroism of those in the forces, a major focus of the website will be the experiences of those on the home front who faced food shortages, regular air raids and, in some cases, learning of devastating personal losses.

By November 2018, when commemorations of the 100th anniversary of the First World War draw to a close, the website will have become a major and enduring tribute to the sacrifices and suffering of Surrey’s people a century ago.

Richard Walsh, Surrey County Council’s cabinet member for localities and community wellbeing, said: ‘This ambitious project will create for future generations an enduring digital record of Surrey’s contribution to the first global war in human history and we warmly welcome the grant which has made it possible.

‘Thousands of men from Surrey alone died in the First World War and the lives of many on the home front were changed beyond recognition. As we commemorate the war’s centenary, we would urge Surrey residents past and present to share their stories and memories to deepen our understanding of the part played by our county.”

A page on the website recalls Guildford’s Dennis Bros during the First World War.

The project wants to hear about Surrey as it was configured at the time of the war – when the London boroughs of Croydon, Kingston, Merton, Sutton and Richmond were still part of the county.

Notable wartime stories linked to Surrey are still emerging and the project hopes to uncover more of these.

Stories brought to light in recent years include the the exploits of Flora Sandes from Thornton Heath who pretended to be man and became a captain in the Serbian Army and insights into the life of renowned war poet Wilfred Owen who trained at Witley North Camp near Godalming in 1916 where he wrote a precursor to his famous Anthem for Doomed Youth.

There is also a page on the role Guildford motor-vehicle manufacturer Dennis Bros played in making munitions.