Memorials to commemorate Walton residents who died during World War Two were unveiled to a large crowd on Battle of Britain Sunday, after months of fund raising and painstaking research.

Donations from local people, businesses, charities and military organisations amounted to almost £20,000 to pay for the stones on which the names of 115 members of the forces and 25 civilians are engraved.

Representatives from the police, Surrey Fire and Rescue and the Royal British Legion joined councillors, the Mayor and Ian Taylor MP at the ceremony at the site of the memorial in High Street and Ashley Road on Sunday.

It was here that the original memorial was installed in 1921 after World War One, but there was no space to include the names of the dead from World War Two.

So on Battle of Britain Sunday last year the appeal was officially launched and volunteers began the laborious process of researching the names of the dead from the Commonwealth Graves Commission.

Councillor Gordon Chubb, chairman of the appeal fund said he was delighted there was a permanent record of the town's men, women and children who died during the war.

He added: "One thing that struck us was that some of those recorded were buried overseas in countries right across the world, such as lonely parts of Japan people will have ended up in terrible situations.

"We also discovered that the son of Lord Trenchard the founder of the RAF lived in Walton, but he was killed in Tunisia. It was rather appropriate, then, that the memorials were unveiled on Battle of Britain Sunday."

He now plans to publish the names in a book of remembrance, so that the people remembered on the memorials can be traced to the grave where they are buried.

September 24, 2002 11:01