Dudley Council House is new home for memorial to fallen ex-pupils
Dudley Council House is the new home for a historic memorial to fallen former pupils of a borough school.
A plaque commemorating 53 ex-students of a Dudley school who were killed in World War One has been installed in a prominent position in the building.
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The plaque was formerly located at the former Sir Gilbert Claughton School on Blowers Green Road in Dudley, its move to the Council House is the result of a campaign by historian John Hale.
Mr Hale said: “I am delighted to see this war memorial restored and placed back on public display.
“The 53 former pupils named on the plaque served their country and paid the ultimate price.
“Although many are buried far from home, they remain lost sons of the borough of Dudley, and it is only right that they are remembered here more than a century later.”
The school opened in 1904 as the Dudley Upper Standard School and had a number of names before being named after a Worcestershire-born businessman and politician when it became the Sir Gilbert Claughton Grammar Technical School in 1957.
It closed as a school in 1990 and was used by the council as The Claughton Centre until it was left vacant and fell into disrepair.
In 2019 the building was sold for £405,000 for development into flats but badly damaged by fire in an arson attack the following year.
The plan to relocate the memorial plaque, which was originally unveiled at the campus in 1921 and had been in storage since the school closed, had the support of St Thomas’s ward councillors Shaukat Ali, Adeela Qayyum and Shazna Azad.
In a statement the trio of councillors said: “We are proud to have supported this campaign.
“It was important that the memorial was placed in a prominent position so the contribution of these former pupils from our ward is properly recognised at the heart of civic life.”
