HERE'S another piece providing us with food for thought as Remembrance Sunday and the Armistice Centenary approach.

Robert and Anne Link got in touch to draw our attention to the part that Portland stone has played in memorials to the war dead. They wondered if many people are aware that there is a special stone on Portland marking the site of the former quarry from which stone was extracted to make war memorials, notably The Cenotaph in Whitehall.

They sent us a picture of the memorial stone which can be viewed by parking in the museum/Church Ope car park and walking a short distance back towards Easton - the memorial stone is on the edge of the grassed area behind a railing.

Anne said: "It is an amazing feat of stone masons' work at its very best and perhaps is not known to many local people. We were very interested and perhaps others will be too."

In Portland - An Illustrated History, historian Stuart Morris tells us about Portland stone in the period after the First World War.

"Nothing but the best stone would do for the great Whitehall Cenotaph, which was to be a national memorial to the dead, and after careful selection a special little quarry was opened in a corner of Wakeham opposite the Mermaid Inn. The order for the Commonwealth War Graves was an incredible challenge to the masons, and between 1919 to 1932 some half a million slabs were shaped, carved with names and badges, and shipped from Portland for planting on the Western Front. Large war memorials were sent to all corners of the earth, one being the Australian Memorial on which Michael Hounsell, Fred Jacobs and Fred Mowlem of Smith and Landers’ yard carved 10,000 names.’

Thanks to Robert and Anne for pointing out this important site that, perhaps, very few of us were aware of.

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