Remembering the Great War ......... the exhibition at Southern Cemetery

Over the next few months many of us will visit museums and art galleries which will be remembering the Great War.

Most will be offering up large impressive exhibitions and have those interactive displays which are what we have come to expect.

And I am all for them, especially those touch screens which take you anywhere in the exhibition and make links with the battlefields of Europe and beyond as well the streets, factories and houses of those on the Home Front.

But as enticing as these are I have to say the small exhibition in the Memorial Hall in Southern Cemetery should be visited. 

The very smallness of the venue allows you to get very close to the letters, photos and other memorabilia from the Great War.

In one case were a series of porcelain tanks while in another was a photo of a young soldier with his wife and young daughter.

It is a picture we are all familiar with, and one that does not have a happy ending.

And of course there is no way of escaping from that simple observation that this is a place full of such stories. 

But mixed with the bleak reminders of death are many of the everyday objects which helped people through those four years, from the risqué postcards to brass plaques erected after the conflict to commemorate those who took part.

The exhibition has been put together by David from his own collection and as he says “may be the only one of its kind situated  in a cemetery.”

That said even if it were somewhere else it would still be a valuable contribution to what we know about the men women and children who lived through the war and a tribute to David’s efforts to save the material for all of us.

The Great War Exhibition is in the Memorial Hall at the entrance to Southern Cemetery.

Pictures; from the collection of David Harrop.