Community given go ahead for war memorial to honour its fallen soldiers
Raploch community activists have been given the goahead for a war memorial to honour locals who died in service of the country.
Rev Barry Hughes and Raploch Community Council had lodged a planning application with Stirling Council planners to install the memorial at the north west corner of Raploch Community Campus on Drip Road.
The planners have now granted conditional approval for the proposals.
A fundraising campaign was launched last year in a bid to raise £30,000 for the war memorial to honour the community's fallen.
In 2019, two local residents discovered not only the names of over 60 local men who served their country and were among the fallen of World War II, but also where they had lived in Raploch.
This discovery gave the impetus for a project to build a war memorial in the Village Square outside the Raploch Community Campus, to commemorate all those from Raploch who have lost their lives in conflict.
The Raploch War Memorial Group formed and then discovered over 120 men and women who also served during World War II and were injured, prisoners of war or awarded and recognised for their actions during service.
They also aim to honour these men and women with a history book that has some of the stories they have discovered.
The group said last year: 'We are pleased to announce that we are now in a position to begin our fundraising for the war memorial.
'It has taken us longer than we expected but we didn't want to start this process until we had everything in place to begin the official application for planning permission.
'We are hoping to raise £30,000 to fund the construction of the war memorial.'
A public consultation in the area in 2022 asked people to vote on a number of options for the memorial.
Asked what they would prefer to see on the memorial, 55 per cent said a list of the names of the fallen in all conflicts of the 20th/21st centuries; 30 per cent said a tribute quote to all the fallen in all conflicts; 7.5 per cent opted for only a list of the names of the fallen in World War II; and 7.5 per cent went for 'other'.
A second question asking people whether the top two winning designs and quote from a local children's war memorial design competition should be included saw 94.59 per cent of respondents say yes, with 5.41 per cent saying no and 2.7 per cent unsure.
The proposals for the permanent memorial to the fallen were dreamt up by local pensioner Mick Lowe and partnerships with local groups including Raploch Community Partnership, St Mark's and St Margaret's, Stirling Council and the Salvation Army have been formed for the project.
The project came about after pensioner Mick began researching soldiers to find out more about his dad John, who died in 1948 after being a prisoner of war during World War Two.
Mick discovered a total of 68 soldiers who died during the Second World War from Raploch. But the proposals will see a war memorial erected to pay tribute to the casualties from several conflicts who originally hailed from Raploch.
The formal planning application said the war memorial will be '2000mm x 1500m wide, will be set on a raised foundation, and then be 2860mm high; it will be made out of sandstone'.
In their decision, council planners said: 'The site is a hard surfaced plaza with decorative tiling and bench seating. The plaza is relatively unoccupied, with the exception of street lighting and a raised CCTV unit.
'It bounds the campus building, which is a contemporary building with large glazed facade on the front elevation, and bold white pillars which support a flat roof overhang. The building sites Forth Valley College and Castleview Primary School.
'Residential development surrounds the area, with recent developments (of the past two decades) to the south and south west, and the existing Raploch community to the north. Drip Road is a traffic calmed area.
'The Raploch Design Guide identified the plaza as a shared 'village square' to provide a shared active travel route which connects the areas north and south of Drip Road.
'The proposal to site a memorial of this scale in this location is considered to be commensurate to the area. The memorial will enhance the functionality of the civic space and would not be considered to detriment the use of the area in providing a safe active travel route.
'The area of the plaza left undeveloped is considered to be sufficient to provide alternative routes through the site without significant obstruction to those navigating the space.
'The memorial will be a stone built (steel foundation) structure measuring 2.8 metres in height approximately. The memorial is on a stepped moulded plinth, with the width of the memorial decreasing on each step before reaching the main structure.
'The memorial is considered to be of a suitable size in relation to surrounding development, and would not become a dominating feature of the landscape."
Six streets in a new housing development being built in Raploch are also being named after men from the area who died in World War Two.
Brewster Crescent, Fairley Crescent, Hulston Road, Turner Street, Spencer Place and McDonald Court, will become lasting legacies of six of those who lost their lives in the conflict, and their fellow fallen comrades from the community.
Private Robert Brewster of 21 Hawthorn Crescent, Pte John Fairley of 43D Raploch Road, Pte William Hulston of 8 Hawthorn Crescent, Pte James Turner of 23 Hawthorn Crescent, Pte Ian Spencer of 4 Haig Avenue, and Pte James McDonald of 64 Drip Road are amongst a list of names compiled by Raploch man Mr Lowe.
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