A gathering of about 50 Old Cranleighans and friends attended a notable lunch in the Emms Centre on 29 November. It was particularly appropriate that members of our Armed Forces Society were invited, because the occasion gave eminent sculptor Nicholas Dimbleby (2 North, 1960-64) the chance to introduce us to the plans for a new War Memorial to be built outside the St Catherine’s window of the Chapel.
Nicholas, who has been commissioned to sculpt the centrepiece, was introduced by Martin Reader. Martin emphasised two themes that are clearly going to be central to his Headmastership and to our 150th celebrations, the idea of the Cranleigh Family and the vital place of the Chapel in our School.
In 1921 the original memorial outside the front of the School was unveiled to record the names of 133 of the OCs who were killed in World War One. This was removed when the Reading Room Memorial was opened in 1949, to include the names of 136 OCs killed in World War Two. The new Memorial will list the 269 and 70 additional other OCs whose names have recently been researched by our archivist Martin Williamson. It will also include those who have fallen in other conflicts, such as the Boer War.
The names will be carved into panels of glass which will surround a paved circular area. In the centre of this will be a plinth on which Nicholas’s sculpture will stand. It will be a slightly above life-size figure representing a young Cranleighan leaving school. Nicholas’s idea is in one sense unorthodox, but is intended to inspire us all to look forward as well as backward, and to challenge Cranleighans young and old to relate to it personally.
The Memorial will be unveiled on 1 July 2016, the 100th anniversary of the first day of the Battle of the Somme. The date will conclude our 150th celebrations, which will begin on 29 September 2015, 150 years after the first pupils arrived at the School.