Civic Voice War Memorials Event 7th February 2018

On 7th February the civic society took part in a Civic Voice event as part of the "First World War Memorials Programme". The event was held at Stockport War Memorial Art Gallery, believed to be the only purpose built war memorial art gallery in the world.

The event heard from a variety of volunteers engaged in the WW1 Memorials Programme who reviewed their work over the past few years and considered the future protection of war memorials in England.

Civic Society Trustee Andrew Moorhouse
giving the society's presentation
Photo: Arthur Procter

The society's presentation included how we became involved, local groups who supported the project, how we carried out the survey and what was achieved.  For the record, 32 memorials were listed on the national database and four freestanding memorials were recommended as eligible for national grade II listing.

Member Remembers Her Father in Student WW1 Interview

Students from Marple Hall School have interviewed member Selma Fielding about her recollections of her father Robert who saw military service as a Quarter Master Sergeant during WW1.  The interview was recorded on video by the students and will be shown at a WW1 commemoration event at the school next year.  

Selma showed the students some of her fathers service memorabilia including service medals and postcards.  The students were surprised to learn that in those days before modern communications he wrote a letter or card every week! 

The interview is part of the collaborative WW1 commemoration project between Marple Hall School and Marple Civic Society.  Other activities will include joint working to identify war memorials for adding to the national register of war memorials and a Civic Society event later in 2015.  The war memorials register is being created by Civic Voice in collaboration with the War Memorials Trust and is supported locally by Marple Civic Society.

£5 million fund for WW1 memorials

Prime Minister David Cameron has revealed details of a £5 million fund to protect war memorials.

Civic Voice will receive half a million pounds to create a national network of volunteers to help build skills to assess the condition of war memorials and encourage their conservation.
Other recipients are English Heritage who will receive half a million pounds to better protect war memorials, Imperial War Museums who will receive half a million pounds to develop a website to help communities find out more information about war memorials and the War Memorials Trust will receive up to £3 million to boost
                              support for their grant scheme and expand their team of
                              specialist conservation officers.

The full Press Release can be viewed here

The Civic Society are currently working with Marple Hall School on a project to commemorate WW1.  It was planned to bid for HLF fundings for the project but in view of the opportunities created by this initiative we have decided to align our project with the activities announced by the fund partners.

We will publish details of our proposals over the next few months but they will include workshops, talks/ presentations and displays of artefacts and documents.

National Civic Day 2013

The Society celebrated National Civic Day on the 22nd June by conducting the Civic Day Survey in Marple shopping centre, canvassing support for our campaign for an independent public realm study into traffic and pedestrian flow as part of the new Chadwick Street foodstore project and tested public opinion on our proposal for a Heritage Lottery funded project to mark the 100th anniversary next year of the start of WW1.  The survey results will be analysed and published here (alonside the national Civic Voice results) within the next few weeks.

Photo by Arthur Procter

We continued our Civic Day theme at the Marple Locks Heritage Society Festival on 30th June. We had an enjoyable and successful day speaking to lots of people and recruiting several new members.

Details of the Civicwatch survey and questionnaire can be found here

National Civic Day - Marple Civic Society Events

This year the Civic Society will be in the Marple shopping precinct between 10-30am and 2-00pm on the 22nd June carrying out the National CivicWatch Survey. 

This year we have extended the survey to include two further questions on the theme of "what do you want for Marple?"

- one is about on our proposal to bid for HLF funds to carry out a project to mark the start of   World war 1,

- the second is about our campaign to include an independent study into traffic and pedestrian management in Marple centre as part of the new foodstore development on Chadwick Street car park.

We will also be taking part in the Marple Locks Heritage Society's festival in the Memorial Park on the 30th June to continue the Civic Day surveys.

Do come along and join us and to give us your views on these or any other issues for Marple.

HLF Bid "Marple and the Great War - 100 Years On"

The Heritage Lottery Fund has made available funding for projects to mark the start of World War 1.

The Civic Society is proposing to make a bid for funding to set up an interactive database to tell the story of the Marple people, including civilians, who took part and the impact on Marple to the present day.

The project will be led by Peter Clarke supported by Jon Bintliff, Sue Ingham and Alan Postill.  Members who feel they would like to help or who would like to know more about the project please contact any member of the project team.