Remembering those from the Great War ...... today ...... the exhibition at Central Ref

The new exhibition In Flanders Fields at Central Ref starts today and will run until November.

Central Ref, 2016

We will all have our own images of the Great War.

Some will be very personal; others more general and they will stretch from family pictures of young men in ill fitting uniforms, to women in the munitions factories and scenes of the carnage on the battlefronts.

And as we move towards the anniversary of the armistice in November, those images along with the stories of heroism and of quite fortitude on the Home Front will be everywhere, which is as it should be.

The danger of course is that we set upon familiar images, which include the young men staring back at us, the smiling “munitions girls” and the news coverage of frail old men and women, often in wheel chairs attending ceremonies across the country.

But that is to forget that in between those sets of powerful images, there were lives lived out, raising families, contributing to the common good and generally getting on with things.

First City Battalion of the Manchester Regiment, Heaton Park, 1914

For my generation, who were born in the years directly after the Second World War, those people were our grandparents, and when I was growing up many of them were still in full time employment, some had yet to have grandchildren and most treated the four years of war as just part of the bigger picture.

And so it seems to me that any exhibition on the Great War must reflect all of that, and at the same time focus on all those who lived through that conflict.

Souvenir created china, date uncertain

It should of course focus on the men and women who went off to the battlefronts, either to fight or serve in hospitals, but also those who stayed behind, working in essential war work, or bringing up children as single parents, and it should also include the children, many of whom coped with part time schooling and the anxieties of having fathers, uncles and brothers serving in uniform.

All of which will be included in David Harrop’s major new exhibition which will begin on September 10th at Central Ref and run through till November.

The Davison family, 1916

David has a vast collection of memorabilia, from medals, and photographs to letters, postcards and the ephemera which includes crested china souvenirs, official documents and the very human stuff like a tram clippie’s manual from 1918.

So, for those who wander in to the Ref next week, you may come across David setting up the exhibition, or if you are like me, you will wait till it is unveiled.


Either way it promises to be instructive, as well as moving, and will prompt many to ask questions and renew their own interest in that conflict which as I write was drawing to its conclusion.

The exhibition is called In Flanders Fields and will take up the whole of the first floor gallery.

Location; Manchester

Pictures; Central Ref,2016, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, remaining pictures courtesy of David Harrop

*In Flanders Fields runs from September 10th till November at Central Ref and is free.