The arch way...almost the only part of the cloth hall which sort of survived.
Contrast this with the pictures below!The re-building effort was paid for by the British Government. Needless to say, there was quite a kerfuffle in the "house" as some MPs (Members of Parliament) wanted to keep "Wipers" as it was a sort of memorial to the war. People who called it home had other ideas, and they came back in drips and drabs to their old homes, digging them out and trying to recover their lost lives. The various governments suddenly got the idea that they could completely rebuild the town the way it was...so they did. They DID bring in flush toilets and fresh water of course! They felt a completely re-built town was a better monument to human courage than a ghost town.
I just thought I would share this story with my readers....it touched me deeply at the time, and still, months later, I shake my head at the sheer stubborn-ness of people who are determined to put the madness behind them.
2 comments:
That's an amazing homage to the original town.
I think it's wonderful that there are still things that allow us to be proud of the human race in the face of adversity.
It is remarkable that people who lived through this war were still so full of violence and hatred that they brought on the second world war!
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