Half of First World War tributes on memorial garden plaque 'wrong'
Nearly half of the names of soldiers who were killed in the First World War and are now engraved on the gates at Great Wyrley memorial garden are wrong, a researcher has found.
Local historian Paul Ford claims 11 out of the 25 names are incorrectly spelled or have extra initials, while the plaque also has a glaring 'omission'.
He was due to present his research to Great Wyrley Parish Council and a project to replace the plaque has already been mooted.
Mr Ford, who is archivist at Walsall Local History Centre, said: "People think war memorials are always accurate but they don't always work like that.
"They are often problematic but in the case of the Wyrley gates I think the gates were stolen while they were being refurbished in the 1980s.
"It seems to me the gate piers were refurbished in 1987.
"They took the gates down and of course the plaques were on the gates.
"While they were refurbishing them someone nicked the gates.
"The gates were put back up with new plaques but from what I can tell they didn't really know the names properly, they were using blurry photographs of the gates to identify soldiers. They were not historians."
Examples of the mistakes include Pat Downing which should be Pat Downey and 'Gretton W.M.H' where the middle 'M' has been wrongly taken from the end of William and should simply be Gretton W. H.
And somehow Ben Smith has become Thomas Smith.
Mr Ford also contests the name of Harold Mitchell should also be on the plaque, whereas at the moment he is listed as a survivor on the plaques which adorn the gate piers.
"Several of the names have extra initials. One of the names is completely wrong and another is terribly misspelled," he added.
Mr Ford said he has used all manner of records from birth certificates to newspaper cuttings to validate his findings which he has spent 18 months researching.
The memorial garden is almost a century old having being unveiled in 1922 and dedicated at the time by Rev Lanfer, Vicar at St Marks.
The plaques on the piers contain the names of 280 men from the area who served, while the 25 names on the gate plaques are of those who had fallen.
Parish councillor Ron Myatt said: "The gates were put up a number of years ago using the best information available.
"It's thanks to Paul's professionalism that he has been able to identify several queries and a number of names which need changing.
"We have approved funding in the budget to hopefully support Paul and enable the changes to be made."
