Words: John Baron
Photos: Iola Shaw
After years of hard work, countless meetings and funding events volunteers are celebrating after work finished on creating a war memorial in Rodley.
Workers at Pudsey-based Gs Ground Services Ltd have put the finishing touches to the memorial, which started out with an appeal to raise £8,000-£10,000 in 2019.
Fundraising and building the memorial has been a truly community affair. Jordan Bray and Allan Howard were two of the people behind the project. They said:
“We literally cannot thank the community of Rodley enough for your support during our project! Also, the support from the local businesses and sport teams helping us fundraise was outstanding.
“Our local school, Valley View Primary, went beyond our expectations and blew us away with the amount of Money they raised for us and even helped at our services – we would just like to say thank you.
“We would like to say thank you to Jags at Rodley Corner Shop. You’ve continued to raise money and helped us sell our calendars. Jags still has a donation pot in his shop. If you would like to spare some change you can always put it in there. Omegastone.co.uk – incredible work from these guys, the memorial looks beautiful.”
The fundraising will continue into the future. They said on social emdia:
“It’s not the end of the road for us… We still need to raise money during the year for the upkeep of the memorial and to keep services/events going. We’ve not been so lucky with our timing [due to the pandemic] and haven’t been able to celebrate. So, stay tuned for a good year.”
Check out Rodley War Memorial’s Facebook page here.
The memorial is so beautiful. Well done.