Would it surprise you to hear that we don't know how many war memorials there are (or have been) in Liverpool? 

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Once the First World War was over - indeed in many cases before it was even over - families, employers, schools, orphanages, football clubs and many other groups began collecting money for memorials. These ranged from clocks, windows, scholarships and trophies to the more traditional rolls of honour, plaques and statues, to the very personal such as engraved jewellery.  There was no attempt to record the memorials, they didn't have to be registered and so there has never been a definitive list. 

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This was the first war that had created such devestating losses amongst all classes of the British people, the first where 'citizen soldiers' had been lost in such numbers and the shock to those who survived the war was great. There was a national fever for commemoration of these brave men and women who had "sacrificed their tomorrow for our today." The war to end all wars was over and those heroes who fought in it were to never be forgotten. 

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Then, within a generation, it happened again. After the Second World War there were less memorials put up, often a list of names was simply added to the existing WW1 memorial. Perhaps there was less money available, perhaps the public didn't feel so driven to commemorate this war because it had already left scars on the country - particularly on Liverpool which was the second most bombed city in the UK. Maybe there was a despondency born from the futility of the earlier commemorations. Whatever the reason, we didn't commemorate our fallen so thoroughly.

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Then came time, the great leveller, memorials were forgotten, the names on them irrelevant to modern life and sometimes even the churches and institutions that held them became obsolete and closed down. Many memorials have been lost over the past century, some are merely hidden away for safekeeping but some are gone forever.

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My research of memorials began with the discovery of a photograph of one of these lost memorials. Click on the arrows below to see more information about the memorials for these churches.