Bedford Park Exhibition Open Over Remembrance Weekend
Display at St Michael and All Angels marks 80 years since D-Day and rocket attacks
Invasion Scars: The first Landing Ship Tank to reach Utah Beach in Normandy on D-Day, 6 June 1944 - Ray Howard-Jones
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November 9, 2024
An exhibition at St Michael & All Angels Church in Bedford Park commemorating those lost 80 years ago is available to view over Remembrance weekend.
It specifically considers the events of 1944 including the D-Day landings in June and the losses experienced on the home front including the V1 and V2 rockets which landed in Chiswick
The church’s Remembrance Sunday Choral Requiem Mass on 10 November will begin at 9.55am, followed by the procession to the Bedford Park Memorial Seat, outside the Parish Hall, for the two minutes’ silence at 11am. All are welcome to attend the service in the church or the Act of Remembrance outside.
The 2024 Remembrance Exhibition features images of D-Day painted by Ray Howard-Jones, an accredited war artist from Wales, who lived locally and worshipped at St Nicholas Church in Chiswick. They include “Invasion Scars: The first Landing Ship Tank to reach Utah Beach in Normandy on D-Day, 6th June 1944” and “Sea Transport: Poles loading bombs. Watercolour, 1944” which are both in the Imperial War Museum.
Ray (Rosemary) Howard-Jones was a renowned Welsh war artist, sea painter, mosaicist, poet and Christian mystic. During WW2 she was commissioned by the War Artists Advisory Committee (WAAC) to produce paintings of the fortifications on islands in the Bristol Channel and preparations for D-Day around Penarth and the Cardiff Docks. WAAC accepted 15 of her paintings, now held by the Imperial War Museum, the National Army Museum, Amgueddfa Cymru/Museum Wales and other British galleries. You can see more of her wartime paintings here.
“Sea Transport: Poles loading bombs. Watercolour, 1944” - Ray Howard-Jones
The Exhibition also records significant losses on the Home Front in Chiswick that year, including:– the death of Mabel Harmer, one of only two women on our war memorials and the only one from WW2, who was killed by a bomb which landed in Thornton Avenue on 30 June 1944; – a V1 ‘doodlebug’ which landed in Bath Road in August 1944, destroying Chiswick Polytechnic (now ArtsEd) and blowing out the East Window of St Michael & All Angels Church; and the first V2, which landed in Staveley Road, Chiswick, on 8 September 1944
Crater left by the Chiswick V2 in Staveley Road, September 1944
The exhibition is held in memory of David Beresford, former archivist and churchwarden who led the St Michael & All Angels Church World War 1 Project, tracking the lives of the 128 people named on its war memorials. David died in 2022 at the age of 82. You can see details and images from his work on the St Michael's WW1 website, supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund.
From 2014 till 2018, to mark the centenary of WW1, David Beresford created illustrated panels which were displayed in the church, commemorating those who had died in each of the years 1914-1918. The stories of all 128 names are told in detail on the WW1 website, with maps and details of the roads where they lived. .
Several of these panels are displayed as part of this year’s Exhibition.
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