British War Memorial Project
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The British War Memorial Project is an internet project founded in 2001 to photograph and make available an archive of British war memorials and war graves all over the world, and currently holding over 500,000 photographs of the graves and memorials to British and Commonwealth service personnel who have died between the start of World War I in 1914, and the present day. It is the largest archive of its kind and is run by Richard Howman
The majority of the 1000 volunteers are involved with photographing graves in their local area in their spare time. The project has also received photographs from British Armed Forces operating overseas.
Originally the Project began as a memorial to British Service personnel, but due to popular demand opened the doors to include all Commonwealth nationalities – all over the world. The project works closely with the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and helps thousands of people a year locate photographs of their relatives' last resting place – in much the same tradition as ‘Graves Registration Units’ did following the World Wars. As a side-benefit, many errors in the CWGC database, caused by the move to a computerised system with optical character recognition, are being corrected.
Photographs and other details about the Service personnel are listed on the project website (www.wargraves.org.uk) and can be searched for free, at any time, by anyone in the world with access to a computer. The main purpose being that a relative can make a ‘virtual’ visit to the grave of their loved one, without huge expense or physical danger (war graves in Iraq for instance). The website has over two million visitors a year.
In May 2006 a ‘task force’ of UK Volunteer Photographers from the Project visited France to photograph over 100,000 graves to add to the Memorial Archive - commemorating the 90th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme in 1916. Operation Tribute 2007 - A second visit to Ypres in Belgium - took place in May 2007.
Unfortunately in 2007 problems with updating pictures to the website have led to uncertainty about its long term future in its current format.
