SEVEN former Sparsholt students who died in the Second World War will finally be commemorated 80 years on.
During the research process before writing the history of Sparsholt College, A Place of Transformation, published in October 2022, a minute book of meetings of the Sparsholt Old Students’ Association, was discovered. Dr John Lander, a College governor and the book’s author, recalls that “the handwritten minute book was found at the back of a filing cabinet in the College’s Library”.
An association meeting in December 1945, re-formed immediately after the Second World War ended, minuted the deaths of six former students. The study of a Sparsholt Student Register confirmed that a seventh student had been killed. Despite almost six years of debates at Old Students’ Association meetings about how the deaths should be remembered, no memorial has ever been installed on the Sparsholt campus.
Ronald Harris Smith, the inspirational principal appointed in 1933 at the age of just 31, successfully led Sparsholt’s Farm Institute through a period of economic recession, poor employment prospects, and the war years.
He was meticulous in writing letters of condolence to the families of students who were killed, but following his departure in 1946, his successor failed to bring the subject of a memorial to a satisfactory conclusion.
In November 1951 the protracted discussions ended, the matter was dropped and until this year nothing was done to mark the wartime fatalities.
A letter to the editor for the Chronicle, in February, seeking to trace descendants of the students, led to the author establishing contact with relatives of six of the seven who were killed.
READ MORE: Letter: Memorial bench planned for Sparsholt students killed in WW2
Family members have willingly provided material from their archives which, together with information from online, Hampshire Record Office documents and newspapers, has enabled a substantial bank of knowledge to be compiled about the students, before, during and after their time at Sparsholt.
Thanks to the persistent, painstaking efforts of those determined to find a way to belatedly commemorate and honour the deaths, and the wholehearted cooperation and support of the students’ descendants, and others, a memorial bench will be unveiled next month.
Though not on the Sparsholt College campus, the teak bench, with inscriptions for each of the seven students, will be available for people to see from Saturday, July 29.
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More than 20 relatives, including members of three generations of at least one family, are expected to attend.
It will be a particularly poignant occasion for the younger brother of one of those killed as he, now well into his 90s, will perform the unveiling ceremony. After time and conversation around the bench, located close to Sparsholt’s war memorial in the centre of the village, refreshments will be provided at the home of a local resident.
A booklet has been produced to mark the occasion and record the sacrifice these seven young men made. They were between 22 and 25 years of age when they were killed between 1941 and 1945, and died before they could put into practice what had been taught them at Sparsholt, and elsewhere.
It may be some consolation to their families that the deaths will, at last, be commemorated with this tangible sign of recognition for their war time service - albeit 80 years or so late.
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