Council hopes to create war memorial on village green

9:28am Monday 4th September 2006

RESIDENTS are hoping that a war memorial at a 166-year-old disused water fountain will create a focal point in the centre of their village.

West Auckland Parish Council wants to create a memorial at the "pant" on the west side of the village green.

The council is hoping to secure funding for the war memorial after recommending the historic pant as a heritage point along the proposed South West Durham Corridor.

Hazel Charlton, chairwoman of the parish council, said: "We haven't got a memorial anywhere in the village. In the memorial hall we've got the names of those from the First World War, and we were thinking of adding the names of those who fought in the Second World War.

"But there's nowhere for anybody to lay flowers.

"A few people have come up to me and said there's nowhere like this in West Auckland or Saint Helen Auckland.

"The pant has been there for hundreds of years, from the time when people would tie their horses to it, so we are thinking that we could incorporate the memorial into the area round the pant and make it more of a feature of the village."

Mrs Charlton said that the parish council wants to grass over the path to the pant, making it part of the green again.

The council is also hoping to create a garden area surrounding the war memorial.

Parish councillor and local historian Martin Roberts said: "The pant was built in about 1840 as a water fountain and made redundant in 1890.

"It was made into a memorial for the jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1897 but now it's redundant again, so we thought we could revive it as a possible site for a new war memorial.

"The only memorial we have got in the village is the memorial hall, which is great, because it's a building we can use, but we thought it would be good to create an external expression in the village for those that died in the war."