WWI Centenary Commemoration Project - Swingfield
St Peter's Church, Swingfield, Kent
The project centres around St. Peter’s Church through the Churches Conservation Trust, Selsted C of E Primary School in Swingfield, and the Memorial Lychgate commemorating lives lost during WW1.
The project has been funded by the Swingfield Street Community Group and Folkestone & Hythe District Council’s WW1 Centenary Memorial Grant scheme (benches) and by the Armed Forces Covenant Fund Trust (silhouettes)
- Recognition of the nine villagers who were killed in WW1 and named on the Lychgate, by placing ‘There but not there’ silhouettes and name blocks in the church. They will be placed in their family and friendship groups to provide a window on why we remember.
- A visual display showing the history of the men, who their families were, and work they did.
- Information on each of the men will be placed outside the homes they last lived at. This will bring these men ‘to life’ in the current community.
- Planned walks around local villages to see where they lived and were brought up.
- Two WW1 commemorative benches placed on the Village Green at the Lychgate Memorial.
- One WW1 bench placed in Selsted School’s new Memorial Garden.
- Activity sessions with school children painting commemorative tiles for display at school and the church.
- Activity sessions for children making gas mask boxes and evacuee tags.
- Learning activity for children, choosing a name on Lychgate, then locating the silhouette in church and studying the individual’s information on the displays.
- Children dressing in clothes of the period.
- We have commissioned a commemorative wall hanging from a well known mixed media artist and quilter, which is bespoke to the nine men who died.
- Armistice Day Lychgate service att 11.00 a.m. on 11th November. Refreshments in the church.
- Opening of Selsted School’s Memorial Garden.
Our aim is to focus local communities on the impact of WW1 and those who died and lived through it, by bringing alive the nine men from Swingfield who died. We’ll make them more than just a list of names on memorial plaques and show they were real people. In this centenary year, ‘Lest we forget’, ‘We will remember’ and ‘There but not there’ are key themes to this project.