Duxford artist Renato Niemis helps honour St Albans Kings Road WW1 dead
- Published
An artist who designed a memorial sculpture for missing US warplanes has agreed to create a World War One tribute in a suburban English street.
Residents of Kings Road in St Albans, wanted to remember the street's 15 men who died in the 1914-1918 conflict.
They contacted Renato Niemis, who created Counting the Cost at the Imperial War Museum at Duxford, "on the off-chance".
He told them it was a "subject close to his heart" and he was "happy to help".
The Kings Road Memorial Fund is trying to raise £5,000 to have it in place by the end of the year.
Counting the Cost has 52 glass panels, etched with outlines of 7,031 aircraft missing in action in operations flown from Britain by US forces during World War Two
The absent voter list during World War One listed 59 men from Kings Road in St Albans as away in the war
A spokeswoman for the fund said it was thought their street suffered the "highest number of losses of any" in the city, but there was no tribute.
Judy Sutton, who has lived there for 33 years, said the idea came when she was an an exhibition by a local historian and she noted down the high number of names of the dead who had lived on her street.
'Human cost'
The men, aged between 16 and 38, include three men from one family.
Niemis designed the memorial sculpture featuring 52 glass panels for Sir Norman Foster's American Air Museum, which is part of the Imperial War Museum at Duxford, Cambridgeshire.
"I emailed him on the off chance and got a message back saying it was just the kind of thing he'd like to be involved with," said Mrs Sutton.
Niemis said it "should be reflective on the human cost of war" and "as it is a community initiative and a subject close to my heart I am only too happy to help".
Mrs Sutton said the memorial will be made from corten - a "kind of rusty metal" which "represents the earth and the trenches".
"We hope it will be a lasting memorial that will still be there 100 years from now for the next generation," she said.
Drummer boy John Coleman of 25 Kings Road, whose grave is in St Albans' Hatfield Road cemetery, never actually made it to the front, but died from Spanish flu before getting there
Who will be commemorated?
Judy Sutton said their criteria for including a name was "very loose" but it was "suggested that we try to include rather than exclude".
She said there were "some anomalies", but "if they had family members in Kings Road at the time they died serving their country" they would be included:
William T Hunt, died aged 38, - 2, Kings Rd
John Hunt, 21, - 3, Kings Rd
Arthur William Peters, 30, - 7, Kings Rd
William Ashby, 23, - 8, Kings Rd
Charles E Burridge, 34, - 15, Kings Rd
Archie Faulder, 20, - 17, Kings Rd
William P Hart, 23, - 21, Kings Rd
Henry C Hart, 26, - 21, Kings Rd
Ernest Hart, 32, - 21, Kings Rd
John Coleman, 16, - 25, Kings Rd
Alfred Foster, 36, - 31, Kings Rd
Edward Atkins, 29, - 39, Kings Rd
Arthur W Day - 46, Kings Rd (severely injured 1917, died 1922)
Percy Cox, 25, - 55, Kings Rd
Fred Henry, 19, - 61, Kings Rd
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