Scout Memorial to Tadley soldiers.
Basingstoke Makerspace recently helped Tadley Scouts and Tadley and District Hisory Society, to produce a memorial for soldiers of Tadley that died in the two wars.
The background to this project started in early 2018, when a group of Tadley scouts, as part of a scouting explorer belt challenge walked the length of Belgium visiting sites of interest relevant to the first world war . A chance encounter involved them modelling a clay model for an art installation, "Coming World Remember Me" by artist Koen Vanmechelen.
Koen Vanmechelen in front of his art installation
The 600,000 clay sculptures represent the Belgian town of Ypres, where more than half a million people were killed during the First World War.The clay models backs are bent and they have an asociated metal stamps bearing the name of a specific dead soldier.
600,000 sculptures in no-mans land
The scouts found that knowing the name of a single soldier associated with the clay model made the person real in a way that sheer numbers could not. They visited his grave and found out more about his life. As a result of this experience they decided it would be good to do the same thing on a much smaller scale for the fallen of Tadley.
The sculpture to commemorate the dead of Tadley was designed with one hexagonal column for each soldier who died, 31 from WW1 and six from WW2. The information about the soldiers lives is now the subject of a book by Tadley and District History Society.
Original design in openscad
The memorial was created in Basingstoke makerspace over a period of two and a half weeks. The circular base was cut out with the X-carve, the hexagon columns cut out with the bench saw and the soldiers names etched and cut out with the laser cutter.
Making Hexagonal columns
First trial pieces
Completed hexagonal stack
The memorial was used to support a talk by the scouts at the remembrance service at St Pauls church in Tadley. Relatives of the lost soldiers were present at the service. A brief description of each person brought home what an impact the loss of so many meant to a population of only about 1500 in 1918.
After the service it was decided that the memorial should be permanently displayed Tadley town council is commissioning a case for the memorial.
The final completed memorial.
