Funds needed to restore Cenotaph

Dear Sir,

I attended Congleton Town's Annual Meeting held on 26th April, 2018 at which John Carter revealed the plans to renovate the Congleton Cenotaph.

Firstly I was truly shocked to learn that there should be about 540 to 550 names on Congleton's Cenotaph but there are only 352 names on the existing war memorial so that almost 200 names are missing.

It is of course absolutely right that Congleton Town has a Cenotaph that honours all the 540 to 550 names.

At the meeting Mr. Carter provided details of the renovated memorial of 14 panels made of the same Portland Stone as used by the War Graves Commission.

I thought the plans laid out by Mr Carter had been very well considered and that the new war memorial would be a very fitting tribute to those who had given up their lives for us.

However, I am concerned about the issue of how the funding will be obtained for this project which is expected to cost about £ 230,000.

It seems that Congleton Town Council are considering a number of options to fund this project including commercial funding.

Fortunately, a friend of mine made it absolute clear at the annual meeting that the idea of commercially funding this project was unthinkable and should be dismissed out of hand, which of course it should be.
In December, 2014 the Heritage Lottery Funding Committee for the North West rejected a request of

£ 661,200 to fund a refurbishment of the Congleton Cenotaph Site and the Community Gardens.

The funding for this project has now been substantially reduced to about £ 230,000 which is just over a third of the funding sought for this project by Congleton Town back in 2014.

In my opinion the best opportunity to complete this noble project as quickly as possible is to approach once again the Heritage Lottery Funding Committee and similar organisations. I would expect that these organisations would seriously consider these well thought out proposals.

Hopefully then all the 540 to 550 names that should be on Congleton's Cenotaph would receive the honour they deserve.

Yours faithfully,

Robert Douglas,

2 Hollycroft,

Congleton CW12 4SH