Radley College has established its first permanent memorial in Ypres, commemorating the Old Radleians who fell in the battles around the city during the First World War.
The plaque was dedicated on Saturday 25th July at St George’s Memorial Church, where around 25 members of the Radley community, including the Warden, gathered for a special service. Old Radleians, parents and friends of the College were joined by members of the War Memorial Fund Committee for the occasion, which was organised and led by College Archivist Clare Sargent.
The service included an extract from Warden Selwyn’s address to the school in November 1917 in which he said of those who had recently fallen ‘scholars and lovers of things of the spirit, men marked out, not less by the quality of their minds than by the integrity of their characters. Anyone who knew them knew how they hated war; its wastefulness, its cruelty, its repudiation of all that they knew as right was abhorrent to them.’ It concluded with a recording of George Butterworth’s ‘Lads in their hundreds’, made specifically for this service by Sam Gladstone and Henry (6.1, L).
The new memorial joins those of many other British public schools, regiments and organisations whose former members fought and fell there. Installed on the south wall of St George’s Memorial Church, in the south-east corner alongside the memorials of other schools, it says:
Radley College, Sicut serpentes sicut columbae.
In memory of all those Radleians and Radley College staff who gave their lives in the battles for Ypres and during the Great War, 1914-1918.
We will remember them.
This memorial provides a lasting place of remembrance in the landscape where so many of them fell.
A full list of Old Radleians killed in conflict can be viewed on the Radley Archives: www.radleyarchives.co.uk/browse/war-memorials
Constructed after the First World War, St George’s was built as a memorial church for British and Commonwealth soldiers who served in the Ypres Salient, as a place of remembrance for those wishing to honour the fallen.
After the service, it was also noted that one Old Radleian, Lt Cyril E. H. Knapp-Fisher (1907, F), is commemorated within St George’s by a memorial window. He died of wounds received in action at Abeele, near Ypres, in 1915.
In the evening, many of those attending gathered at the Menin Gate for the daily Last Post Ceremony. A wreath was laid by Mark Dwerryhouse (1978, F) on behalf of the College. Mark served as a captain in the Life Guards. Lt Col Hugo Collis (1988, E), who attended in full ceremonial uniform with members of his family, laid a wreath on behalf of the British Embassy in Paris, making for a particularly impressive Radley presence at the ceremony.
Photographs from the day can be viewed below or online here.
To explore an online map of memorials at St George’s church, visit: www.stgeorgesmemorialchurchypres.com
