A ceremony to unveil Harthill, Eastfield and Greenrigg’s new war memorial finally took place two years after everything had to be put on hold thanks to covid.
A dedication service was held which saw locals join Lord Lieutenants from both West Lothian and North Lanarkshire Councils and faith leaders to pause and remember the 81 men whose names are on the memorial.
The new memorial was created before the pandemic hit two years ago and members of the War Memorial Association were delighted to be able to officially unveil it.
Chairman John Walker said: “We started in 2015, we had always had a dream of having an outside war memorial, the existing war memorial in the church was only accessible when the doors were open, so we wanted to have one that everyone could enjoy.
“So in 2015 we started the process of finding out if we could organise a committee and we started raising money. Initially we were going to have a VE Day celebration and had raised funds for that event and we were going to have a street party, and then covid came along and cancelled everything.
“We were also working along with North Lanarkshire Council on a bit of ground to put it on and also ideas of what it should look like.
“We all had out own ideas and then North Lanarkshire Council put us in touch with one of their designers who came up with what’s there now.
“We were pretty close to getting the funding from North Lanarkshire Council as covid came along and we gave the go to give them the permission to start digging and then it’s lay for about two years waiting on the dedication ceremony, but in that time we found another 18 names that had been missing through more research.”
John continued: “The funding to build the memorial came from North Lanarkshire Council but the funding to support the event itself came from fundraising by us as a committee and from people in the village.
“We would like to thanks everyone who has supported us. We also had a street party that was a VE celebration and jubilee in one, which we enjoyed. I think the village is quite happy with it, I’ve not heard a bad word about the memorial and everyone was full of praise for the dedication event.”
“The next task is to get lighting for the memorial along with the statue of the miner in the same area, so that’s where we’re heading, which will cost over £6000 for that.”
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