The memorialisation of the Great War in Folkestone, Canterbury and Dover, 1918-24

The aim of the thesis is to explore the spate of memorial construction that took place at civic and local level in the immediate aftermath of the Great War. At the heart of the study lies an examination of the layering of memory in this commemorative activity as the war dead were remembered in their various different roles, as citizens, work colleagues, school alumni, club members, parishioners, regimental comrades and, of course, fathers, husbands and sons. The study concentrates on the major urban centres of Canterbury, Folkestone and Dover, each of which experienced something of a revival during the war years, Canterbury as the spiritual home of the nation and Folkestone and Dover as key military sites acting as lifelines between England and the Western Front. Thus, from a civic perspective, remembrance of the war dead was as much about the collective as the individual, about pride rather than loss. Yet, at subcivic level, local communities and organisations, with their own agendas to pursue, were also recalling the fallen from a more intimate viewpoint. It is the impact of these conflicting claims, the tension that existed within this complex matrix of remembrance and the extent to which the memory of the fallen was shaped by the demands of competing schemes that forms the basis of this study. In particular the focus falls on the memorialisation process itself, the debates over form and style, the rituals of naming and financing and the ceremonies for unveiling and dedication, for it was in this often lengthy and convoluted process that those in authority could assume control over the rites of mourning and transform private grief into a public narrative.