- County name: Greater London
- Group/School name: Grangewood Independent School
- Age group: 5 - 11
- Group type:
War Memorials Trust was contacted by staff at Grangewood Independent School, London, at the start of the 2014 academic year. The school was keen to work with the Trust on 11th November, Remembrance Day.
The Trust’s Learning Officer visited the school on Remembrance Day to give a whole school assembly about the significance of the day and then to work more closely with the school’s Year 2 class. The school had already been doing some work on Remembrance in the lead up to our visit and this was on display in the school hall during the assembly. Interestingly the school also has two war memorial plaques in its hall, one for a scout group and one which we were unable to identify. There was no record of this memorial available and little is known about it despite the fact that it records a number of names of those who died in World War I. This is a good example of why it is important to record local war memorials on War Memorials Online (www.warmemorialsonline.org.uk) so that we understand who they commemorate.
Following the assembly WMT accompanied the school’s Year 2 pupils to Central Park to attend the Remembrance service taking place at Newham war memorial (www.warmemorialsonline.org.uk/node/111374). The pupils had made a poppy wreath to lay at the memorial and were one of several schools represented at the service. They had the opportunity to look closely at the memorial before the service started and learn some information about its history and design from our Learning Officer, before participating in the memorial service and meeting representatives from other organisations.
War Memorials Trust was delighted to return to the school in 2015 to repeat this visit with a new class of Year 1 and 2 children and are glad to be able to support the learning of the school’s younger pupils in this way.
