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Oldfield Park Junior School (Bath) WW1 Memorial Project

Beechen Cliff Methodist Church (Bath) 

WW1 Memorial

Beechen Cliff Methodist Church is at the bottom of Shakespeare Avenue on Bear Flat. It's a surprisingly attractive church with details very much in the Arts & Crafts tradition. It also features an unusual raked seating arrangement in the body of the church. 

Beechen Cliff Methodist Memorial


From the Bath Chronicle and Weekly Gazette, Saturday 24th July 1920
:

BEECHEN CLIFF METHODISTS

Unveiling of a War Memorial

Mr. G. K. Turvey’s Thankoffering

There was a good congregation at Beechen Cliff Methodist Church on Sunday morning when the unveiling of a memorial to those connected with the Church who had fallen in the Great War took place. The memorial was suitably inscribed and was in the form of a marble and alabaster tablet, kindly presented to the church by Mr. G. K. Turvey as a thank-offering for the safe return of his only son. It is fixed at the eastern end of the building on the opposite side to the pulpit and bears the names of nine young men.

THE UNVEILING

Mr. G. K. Turvey performed the ceremony of unveiling and handed over the memorial as a gift to the Church to the Pastor (Rev. R. Wilton) who accepted it on behalf of the Trustees of the building. Mr. Turvey said the tablet was to be regarded as a memorial to those young men connected with the Church who had laid down their lives for their country. He concluded his remarks by quoting the following lines from a poem by John Oxenham:

“God writes his characters too grand
For our short sight to understand:
We catch but broken strokes and try
To fathom all the mystery
Of withered hopes, of death , of life,
The endless war, the useless strife.
But there, with larger, clearer sight
We shall see this: His way was right."

The Rev. R. Wilton, in accepting the gift, said the tablet would remain as a sign of willing sacrifice for generations to come, and would be a reminder to their children and their children’s children of the Great War and of their thank-offering to God for the return of their loved ones. It was a memorial to their heroic brothers connected more or less with that Church and congregation, who had made the supreme sacrifice for their country. They owed to them a great debt which could never be repaid, for they had given their all, in the sacred cause of liberty. They left them to the Heavenly father in faith and confidence of a happy re-union. One of the best ways to remember them was to make this country worthy of their sacrifice and worthy of its best traditions. They all wanted England to be great, glorious and free; “First flower of the earth, first gem of the sea.”

The choir sang the anthem “What are these arrayed in white robes”. Afterwards the tablet which was executed and fixed by Messrs. B. Turvey & Sons was viewed and much admired. Captain Stone was present with a company of Girl Guides and Scoutmaster O’Hara with a troop of Boy Scouts.


The inscription on the memorial reads:


This is erected in thankfulness to God for the
return of our dear ones, to show sympathy with
the bereaved, and ever to remember those whose
lives were sacrificed in the Great War of 1914-19

W. L. Stone
F. W. Turner
E. Burt
C. Studley
C. E. Lester
A. W. Lester
P. Roskelly
A. W. Bailey
C. Ayres

"And with the morn, those angel faces smile
Which we have loved long since, and lost awhile"