War Memorial

War memorial erected on the site of an ancient stone cross, at the boundary between Bexwell and Ryston parishes. The monument was built to commemorate two friends killed in action during the First World War: Second Lieutenant Lionel Henry Pratt of Ryston Hall, killed on 25 September 1915 at the Battle of Loos, aged 25, and Second Lieutenant Charles Dean Prangley of Bexwell Rectory, killed on 25 September 1916 at the Battle of Morval on the Somme, aged 19.

The memorial consists of a plain limestone cross set upon a weathered square base with chamfered corners, which is believed to derive from an ancient cross formerly occupying the site. Two square limestone plinths with inlaid marble tablets on one side stand beside the cross. The upper plinth is inscribed with the names and dates: 'L. H. Pratt of Ryston Sept. 25. 1915 / C. D. Prangley of Bexwell Sept. 25. 1916.' The lower plinth bears a lengthy verse inscription: 'All that we had we gave / All that was ours to give / Freely surrendered all / That you in peace might live. / In trench and field and many seas we lie / We who in dying shall not ever die / If only you in honour of the slain / Shall surely see we did not die in vain.'

Pratt was the third son of Edward Roger Murray Pratt and Louisa Frances Pratt of Ryston Hall, and served in the 18th Battalion of the London Regiment (London Irish Rifles). He is buried in a mass grave at Maroc British Cemetery, Grenay. Prangley, known as 'Doox', was born in 1897, the son of Charles Wilton Prangley and Elizabeth Prangley. His mother died when he was two years old. He served in the 1st Battalion of the Lincolnshire Regiment and is buried at the Guards' Cemetery in Les Boeufs. His father, Reverend Prangley, commissioned a local corn merchant, George Smith of Downham Market, to produce a commemorative book with illuminated pages, now kept in St George's Memorial Church in Ypres. The photographs of Doox within the book are mounted on silk from his mother's wedding dress; the covers are made of wood from the garden of Bexwell Rectory; and a gold cross on the cover is fashioned from his mother's wedding ring. The wooden cross that originally marked Doox's grave in France hangs in St Mary's Church, Bexwell.