Wayside Cross Rededication – November 1994
COMPTON AND SHAWFORD PARISH COUNCIL
THE WAYSIDE CROSS
This unique and important memorial to the troops who passed through the Parish on their way to the Western Front in the early years of the First World War, from camps in Twyford and elsewhere, was rededicated in its prominent new position on Armistice Sunday, 13th November 1994.
The solemnly fitting ceremony was conducted by The Reverend P L S Barrett, Rector of Compton and Otterbourne, assisted by The Reverend L N Usher-Wilson, in the presence of about 50 parishioners and other interested supporters in a damp and muddy clearing at the Western edge of Shawford Down, which so evocatively recalled the Flanders Fields.
Wreaths were laid by the representatives of The Western Front Association, The Rifle Brigade, The British Legion, Twyford Parish Council, Otterbourne Parish Council and Compton and Shawford Parish Council.
Appropriate links with the past were provided by Mr Lampard of Twyford, whose grandfather had constructed the Cross in 1921, by Mr Trevor Wheble of Vokes and Beck who had carved the new commemorative stone and whose grandfather had carved the original, and by Mrs Marjorie Abraham of Shawford, who remembered as a small child being taken by her mother to watch the troops on their march south.
It will be recalled that this is the second time the Cross had to be moved as a result of road work construction. It is now resited as nearly as possible to its first site and supported as it originally was in a millstone. Let this be its final location.
BARRIE HAZLITT
PARISH COUNCILLOR
published in the Compton & Shawford Parish Magazine, January 1995
The Wayside Cross itself was erected several years earlier. We have yet to find the actual date of its installation, but it was already in position in November 1918. A photograph of the Wayside Cross appears in the 23 November 1918 issue of The Sphere.
WaysideCrossReDedicationServiceSheet1994-11-13.pdf