War Memorial Cherry Lane Cemetery

War Memorial, Cherry Lane Cemetery, Hayes

This civilian war memorial and gravestone dates from the mid to late 1940s and commemorates 37 workers of the Gramophone Company, Blyth Road, Hayes who were killed when a V1 flying bomb struck a factory surface air-raid shelter on 7 July 1944. The memorial has been restored twice, in 1994 and again in 2009.

The memorial is positioned to the immediate west of the main axial north-south path through the cemetery. It comprises a simple headstone set to the west of a stone-flagged rectangular enclosure measuring approximately 2.25 metres square. The enclosure has a raised stone surround with chamfered edges and corners, with stops at the eastern entrance, and contains a central octagonal stone vase. The memorial stone itself, approximately 1 metre wide by 1.75 metres high, has a gently curved top and stands on a chamfered plinth. At the top centre is a carved flame wreath with ribbons to either side. Below this is a lengthy inscription in incised, blackened lettering in capitals in a serif font. The inscription is arranged in two sections and reads: "IN MEMORY OF / [12 names] / WAR WORKERS OF / THE GRAMOPHONE COMPANY / WHO DIED THROUGH ENEMY ACTION / 7TH JULY 1944 / AND LIE BURIED HERE / [25 further names] / WHO DIED ON THE SAME OCCASION / AND ARE BURIED ELSEWHERE / THIS STONE WAS ERECTED BY THEIR / FELLOW WORKERS AND THE COMPANY." The memorial thus serves both as a burial marker for those interred in the mass grave on site and as a memorial to the remaining casualties buried elsewhere. Late twentieth-century photographs show that the inscription has undergone some reworking, notably the closing of a gap that originally separated the final two lines, which were originally in a smaller font, and some re-working and blackening of the wreath.

Cherry Lane Cemetery is a municipal burial ground run by the London Borough of Hillingdon. It was laid out in the mid-1930s to provide a new cemetery as the churchyard at St Mary's Hayes had become full. The grave marker and memorial was erected in remembrance of the 37 employees of the HMV Gramophone Factory, Blyth Road, Hayes. On 7 July 1944 at 1459 hours, a V1 flying bomb, known colloquially as a doodle-bug, struck a factory surface air-raid shelter. According to the original bomb census form now held in the National Archives, the impact killed 24 people with 21 more seriously injured; some of the seriously injured subsequently died. The V1 struck at the main entrance to the shelter, causing the concrete roof to collapse. Although some of the badly injured were rescued through an emergency exit, others remained trapped for several hours. Twelve of the victims are buried in a mass grave in this cemetery, while Imperial War Graves Commission records indicate that the other victims, some from distant parts of London, were buried closer to their homes. The date of the memorial's erection is not documented but is assumed to have been within a few years of 1944.

During the Second World War, the HMV Gramophone Factory was the largest employer in Hayes. Originally known as The Gramophone Company, it gradually became known as HMV from its trademark "His Master's Voice". The company merged with the Colombia Gramophone Company in 1932 to become Electrical and Musical Industries (EMI), though it retained the HMV brand name. The Hayes factory had a history of wartime production, manufacturing munitions during the First World War and radar and communications equipment during the Second World War. The destruction of the air-raid shelter in July 1944 is considered to have been the most serious single incident in terms of casualties in Hayes during the Second World War.