Ravensden War Memorial

This page was written by Trevor Stewart

The Ravensden war memorial consists of a highly polished Cornish granite needle on a rough hewn square granite base and is located in the Churchyard of All Saints Church. The provision of the memorial was undertaken by a Special Memorial Committee formed by Ravensden Parish Council on 24th March 1919. The names of the Committee are recorded in the Minutes of a subsequent meeting held on 9th April when Mr. Wythes was elected Chairman and Treasurer, and Mr. Bishop (the Schoolmaster) Secretary. A design and tender from Messrs Jarvis Stonemasons of Bedford was accepted. In all £62 18s 6d (equivalent to £3,500 today) was received in public subscriptions from residents of the village.

The memorial was unveiled on 15th August 1920 by Mr. F.A. Wythes and the Vicar, Rev J.R. Pullen, gave a most moving tribute to the twelve local men whose names were recorded on the front panel of the base. Of these there were two sets of brothers and several cousins and so in common with many other small villages, Ravensden lost a goodly percentage of its young men in this terrible conflict.

At the conclusion of the Second World War just twenty seven years later, the names of a further six young men from the village who had died in those hostilities were added to the panel on the reverse of the base. These included the then local Vicar who volunteered in 1941 and died in a prisoner of war camp in Singapore.