The Early Years
AT a public meeting at Lancaster Town Hall on November 27th, 1918, an unusual decision was taken: the residents of this historic Lancashire settlement would fund two very different memorials to honour the sacrifices made by their men in the Great War. The first would be similar to those being discussed at gatherings across the land; a stone monument featuring the names of local fatalities in a location where it could act as a focal point for communal mourning. The second would involve an altogether unfamiliar idea; the creation of a memorial village that could house and employ local men (and, where necessary, their families) who had come home from the war with severe physical disabilities. It was the brainchild of two well-known Lancastrians, the landscape designer Thomas H Mawson and the industrialist Herbert Lushington Storey. Both schemes would come to fruition, with the foundation stone for the first properties on the Westfield War Memorial Village, Lancaster, unveiled less than a year later on November 15th, 1919. The village would primarily be for disabled men who had served with the city's local regiment (the King's Own Royal Lancasters) and secondly for all Lancastrians who had served and been left with a lasting disability. It was hoped that this northern community would become the forerunner of a new national movement to help support the worst of the 1.7 million British soldiers who had returned from the war with a disability. In fact, both Mawson and Storey were to be involved in an organisation that would strive, with limited success, to spread the concept across the United Kingdom.
