Chorley Pals Charity Launches Cenotaph Appeal

Lindsay Hoyle and Nikki Davidson-Kerr launch the new Chorley Cenotaph Appeal

Monday, 28th February sees the first anniversary of the unveiling of the memorial to the Chorley Pals, a company of 225 local men who became an integral part of the famous ‘Accrington Pals’ decimated on the Somme during the First World War.

The seven foot high statue and memorial was unveiled by Chorley MP, Lindsay Hoyle, and Catherine Calderbank, a daughter of a Chorley Pal, at a ceremony on the town’s Flat Iron market attended by nearly 2,000 onlookers. The memorial cost £107,000, raised by the Chorley Pals charity headed by its two co-founders, local historian Steve Williams and Lindsay Hoyle MP.

The money was raised without going to a public appeal with £30,000 coming from BAE Systems and £65,000 from an anonymous donor.

Last summer the charity successfully bid for funds for a major heritage project in the town called ‘Chorley Remembers’, receiving initial funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund for development work.

One of the major aims and outcome of the two year project is to research and place the names of the men from the town who fell in two World Wars, onto the Cenotaph in Astley Park in Chorley. It was unveiled on the 31st May 1924 but no names were engraved on to the Celtic Cross nor placed on any adjacent panels.

In the early 1950s the then town Council did look at placing the names around the Cenotaph, as did the local branch of the Royal British Legion a few years later, but nothing came to fruition. Now, 87 years after the Cenotaph was unveiled, the Chorley Pals charity is to launch a public appeal for £20,000 to go towards the project.

Some £2,000 has already been pledged from the charity’s own funds and from the Chorley Building Society (a major supporter and sponsor of the project) and Trustees are asking the town’s businesses and residents to give generously to the appeal.

An amount has to be raised as ‘matched funding’ and it is hoped that it can be raised in the next twelve months. Some 25,000 flyers about the project and the appeal have already been printed.

The day-to-day management of the project is by a full-time Project Manager, Chorley resident Nikki Davidson-Kerr along with Pals Trustee Steve Williams. Designs for the Cenotaph project are well advanced and will be discussed with Chorley Council before going out to public consultation later in the Spring.

So far, some 850 names of the fallen have been identified by volunteers from the Chorley Branch of the Lancashire Family History & Heraldry Society based in the town’s museum at Astley Hall. Two fundraising events are already planned with a dinner and talk in May, followed by a Summer Ball at Chorley Town Hall in July organised by local Solicitors and Accountants.

Other elements of the £300,000 project, funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, include:

• Memorial Arch preservation
• Chorley Pals Memorial improvements (disabled access and interpretation)
• Astley Hall Memorial Room upgrade
• Town Heritage / Remembrance Trail
• Education / schools programme
• Research, Talks, Workshops & Exhibitions
• Two books
• Website – see www.chorleyremembers.org.uk
• Audio & video ‘Memories’ project
• Events (‘Chorley Remembers Day’ in 2011) and a Festival of Remembrance (in 2012)