Martyn Webster- Registered: 18 Nov 2017
- Posts: 56
#1
A Dover Express article earlier this year by Sara Tilley on the search for the "mystery owners" of the Rifles Monument has taken my interest.
I am not so sure there is any real mystery about it.
I subscribe to British Newspapers Online which makes available searchable data from a huge range of newspapers,mostly local,including the Dover Express 1858-1950.
The following report from the D.E. of 16th February 1861 clarifies as follows:
"A letter was read (at a Dover Council meeting) from Major H G Deedes 1st Battalion 60th Rifles acknowledging with grateful thanks the permission
of the council to the officers of that battalion to erect a memorial to their comrades who fell in the late Indian rebellion in the form of a monument to stand
in the opening between Camden and Waterloo Crescents near to the seafront accepting with gratitude the handsome offer of the corporation to place an
iron railing around the monument"
Other articles online also report on the history of the monument - one only has to "Google" the words "Rifles Monument Dover" to find them.
In essence therefore it would appear that the monument has remained the responsibility of the army battalion who first put it up.
This would now devolve presumably to The Rifles Regiment and ipso facto the MOD.
In practical terms however Dover Borough Council would appear over many years to have actually maintained the monument up to 1974 and thereafter presumably Dover District Council.
The original railings around it were the council's responsibility but they were removed it seems during the Second World War.
It may have been that through the mists of time the one responsibility became merged with the other and continued for the monument alone "by custom".It certainly always appears well maintained.
The National Heritage grade 2 listing of 2014 omits to include any reference to maintenance or ownership.
I would have thought this question must have arisen at some time or other and that either Dover Borough Council or Dover District Council would have had a file on it.
There is no mention of it in the catalogue of Dover Borough records held at Maidstone transferred there in 1979.
The current tribute on the Monument by the Royal Green Jackets surely gives the question an interesting turn.
howard mcsweeney1, Martyn Webster and Brian Dixon like this
Martyn Webster- Registered: 18 Nov 2017
- Posts: 56
#2
howard mcsweeney1 likes this
howard mcsweeney1 likes this