A MEMORIAL book containing the names of over 174,000 people from the UK and Ireland who lost their lives in Belgium during the First World War as gone on display in Durham Cathedral.

Members of the public are invited to search through the book and write their family’s story on the blank page opposite the name they recognise, or place photocopies of photographs and letters on the pages.

The specially-commissioned book called Assembly has been brought on a tour of the UK by the In Flanders Fields Museum in Ypres.

The exhibition is the concept of Derbyshire artist Val Carman, who was the first artist-in-residence at the museum and also worked in a commemorative residency in Passchendaele in Belgium, which was heavily bombed during the war.

Exhibited alongside the book are five chairs from St Audomarus Church in Passchendaele - each representing the casualties from one year of the war.

Ms Carman said: “I feel it is important to bring a familiar, tactile reference from Flanders to the UK to accompany the memorial book Assembly.

“The chairs represent the emptiness that would have been physically present within many homes and communal sites. The empty chair, which once was occupied, becomes a simple memorial to the loss of a person."

Passchendaele was the scene of one of the worst battles of World War One, with the church and surrounding village were completely destroyed during the conflict. The chairs would have been part of the rebuilding after the war.

The book and the chairs are touring 16 different sites in the UK and Northern Ireland until 2018, when the exhibition will be returned to Belgium.

Durham Cathedral’s exhibitions and events officer, Rebecca Read, said: “This is a wonderful initiative and we are proud to be one of the 16 sites to be hosting this book, during what will be a five-year journey.

“Durham Cathedral has many connections with World War One, not least through the Durham Light Infantry, whose chapel we give a home to and our Ypres Rose, which was brought from Belgium in 1917 by DLI soldier Lieutenant HJW Scott. It was planted in the DLI Garden here at the cathedral by his son in 1978.”

Assembly will be at Durham Cathedral until Friday October 9 in the Chapel of the Nine Altars. For more information visit www.durhamcathedral.co.uk/whatson.