Progress Update…

Construction Complete!

At the end of the Great War, the name of the local Finchley Community Hospital was changed to Finchley War Memorial Hospital to commemorate the War Dead, but there were no names recorded.

 

Mick Crick and I, with the support of the BWMA, took this challenge on, and in November 2015 we approached the then management of the hospital for permission to erect a War Memorial. We received a very positive and supportive response, the attitude being, a War Memorial is meaningless without the names of those who made the ultimate sacrifice.

 

I started to research names of War Dead from both the Great War and the Second World War, from the Finchley and surrounding area together with the huge task of fund raising.

 

Gerald Alterman joined us in 2017 to help with the fund raising and organisation of this mammoth task.

 

We now had 1,307 names and approached a stonemason to ascertain the costs of such an undertaking. By May of 2018 we felt ready to go ahead with the finalised project.

 

However, we were then met with problems associated with authorisation from the hospital freeholders. Our Chairman, Martin Russell, negotiated with the London Borough of Barnet to obtain all necessary legalities and authorisations for this project to go ahead.

 

Construction is now complete of this magnificent Memorial as you can see from the photograph above and the series of ‘progress’ images in the gallery below – and we hope to dedicate the memorial during September 2021.

 

Catherine IPL Loveday

BWMA Trustee.