Vandalism, Preston New Hall Lane Cemetery

[Dr jon]

This weekend at home in Preston tending my family graves in this awful cemetery at New Hall Lane in Preston, I came upon this unbelievable act of vandalism:

I know it is a later headstone than WW1, seemingly from Afghanistan in the 1994, but thought this should be shown here.......how can anyone do this?????

I will be emailing the CWGC notifying them of the damage. Sadly this goes on throughout the cemetery although this is the only CWGC headstone I saw damaged.

Jon

[ChrisC]

Jon,

I will restrain myself from a natural instinct to answer your question about how can anyone do this, together with my impulse answer as to what should be done with them. I will just offer the advice that the people to contact are not CWGC but the MOD. I too saw a non WW1 / WW2 vintage grave in that condition while photographing and the MOD sorted it quite quickly.

Chris C

[Dr jon]

Chris,

Thanks for that. As I work with the MOD on a daily basis, I will pass it on.

Regards

Jon

[Terry Denham]

Chris is correct. This is a Non-World War Grave and the headstone was supplied by the MoD.

Pte Drake died off-duty rather than in any action, training or deployment overseas. As such his name does not appear on the Armed Forces Memorial but will appear in the Roll of Honour currently being produced.

[Seadog]

When John McCrae wrote these words long ago I bet he did not think that they would resonate today.

“If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep” (In Flanders Fields)

It seems that this is yet another extreme example of the breaking of the contract that should exist between us, the public and our armed forces. A very sad state of affairs indeed.

Norman

[Nigel Marshall]

Hi,

Alas, not a new problem for this particular cemetery. I visited New Hall Lane in 1998 to photograph the grave of Pte William Young VC who was buried there in 1916. His is a private headstone consisting of a cross on a base in a kerbed plot. The cross had been removed from the base and was laying in the kerbed plot, but both cross and base showed signs of forced removal - probably a hefty kick.

I visited again early last year and was pleased to see that the whole grave had been recently renovated and tidied, perhaps for the 90th anniversary of the gallant private's death. Also present was a fairly new RBL type wreath with dedication written by a niece.

Unfortunately vandalism flourishes where the perpetrators can do what they do in relative isolation and shielded from view. Preston New Hall Lane Cemetery is a large enough expanse to allow this type pf activity to go on unnoticed until too late.

Cheers,

Nigel

[PaulC78]

Apologies for digging up an old topic, but I found this while searching for something else...

I saw this headstone at Preston last year and reported the damage to the MOD. Apparently it has been reported as broken before, as long ago as 2001 in fact, but because the soldier had a private burial in a family owned plot they say there is nothing they can do, that it is a private matter for the family to resolve when and if they are able.

Hard to tell with the top half missing, but has this headstone sunk a bit as well? The inscription and cross seem rather low down.

[PaulC78]

Trying to find something in my old posts and was reminded of this topic... Pleased to say that sometime between 2015 and 2018 a new family memorial was placed on this grave.