Ongar War Memorial Medical Centre Roll of
Honour
The Ongar War Memorial Medical Centre
occupies the site of the former Ongar War Memorial Hospital. The present building, which houses the Ongar
Health Centre (the town’s G P Surgery) was opened very recently although the building
itself was completed in 2012.
In the Reception area of the Centre is a new
Roll of Honour, which was dedicated in May 2012. I understand that it may be viewed by prior
appointment.
The former Ongar War Memorial Hospital was
opened as a cottage hospital in August 1933, some 15 years after the end of the
First World War.
Inside the former building was a Roll of
Honour, now preserved in the Essex Record Office [ERO A10815].
The document contains a list of
several men who fell in the district and is arranged by parish. Those parishes included are: Ongar, Shelley,
High Ongar, High Laver, Willingale, Greensted, Kelvedon [Hatch], Stanford
Rivers, Stapleford Tawney, Theydon Mount, Stapleford Abbots, Stondon Massey,
Lambourne, Fyfield, Berners Roding, Navestock, Moreton, Little Laver, Abbess
Roding, Beauchamp Roding, Doddinghurst, Blackmore, Norton Mandeville, and
Bobbingworth.
The lists are by far from
complete, contain duplications of commemorated names and incorrectly spelt
names. This is probably because records
were not carefully checked some years after the close of the Great War. (War
Memorials erected later than the immediate years after the conflict are known
to contain mistakes e.g. Maldon).
Turning to the exterior of the
present building, there is a mural of poppies which include the words:
“At the going down of the
sun and in the morning, we will remember them. When you go home,
tell them of us and say for their tomorrow, we gave our today.”
It is a dedication to the people
of Ongar who sacrificed their lives in the First World War and subsequent
conflicts.
