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Debacle over addition to war memorial gets villagers in a twist

THE name of First World War heroine Kitty Trevelyan will have to be removed from the Meavy village war memorial 
THE name of First World War heroine Kitty Trevelyan will have to be removed from the Meavy village war memorial

The announcement that Kitty Trevelyan’s name had finally been etched into her village war memorial 100 years after her death was made with great fanfare and hailed a victory for women’s rights.

But just a few months later, the entire campaign has descended into farce after a local resident complained that the person remembered was “nothing short of a fictional character name” from BBC war drama The Crimson Field and it emerged that the local parish council should never have altered a listed monument without consent.

Burrator Parish Council’s application for retrospective planning permission was met with opposition from various quarters, including the War Memorials Trust, and has now been withdrawn amid suggestions that Kitty’s name should be removed from the monument in Meavy, Dartmoor, and that she should perhaps be remembered on a separate stone.

Sue Robinson, founder of Wenches in Trenches, which researched Kitty’s story and campaigned for her name to be included on the memorial said she wished they could wash their hands of the whole debacle.

“The Parish Council, who gave us permission to do this, are wrong. They live in a national park, they should have known they would need permission,” she said.

“They wanted us to pay to have the name put on and now they want us to pay to have it taken off. It was £100 + VAT - just change really - but they said they couldn't afford to, and nobody in the village could either.

“They want absolutely nothing to do with it and might even serve us with an enforcement order. The whole thing’s a joke. It’s a lump of granite on some grass. I feel like I’m in the League of Gentlemen.”

Kitty Trevelyan, who was born Armorel Avice Kate Trevelyan, is thought to have lied about her age so she could join troops in France during the First World War when she was just 17.

She joined the Voluntary Aid Detachment as a canteen worker but died two years later after being struck down by measles and pneumonia and was buried in a Commonwealth War Grave in Wimereux, near Calais, rather than in her home village of Meavy.

When her name was marked on the local Grade II listed monument in her home village of Meavy in February, a special dedication ceremony was held in to mark the event.

But two local residents complained on the basis that Kitty’s name had not been recorded correctly.

Drama The Crimson Field (L-R) Rosalie Berwick (MARIANNE OLDHAM), Kitty Trevelyan - Credit: Nick Wall 
Drama The Crimson Field (L-R) Rosalie Berwick (Marianne Oldham), Kitty Trevelyan (Oona Chaplin) Credit: Nick Wall

The council applied for retrospective planning permission from the Dartmoor National Park Authority, but one resident, Amanda Steers, claimed that Sarah Phelps, who wrote BBC drama The Crimson Field and is also, coincidentally, a patron of Wenches in Trenches, had devised the character Kitty Trevelyan and that her proper name should be recorded on the memorial.

“The surviving war documentation and even her own birth certificate say Armorel Trevelyan with no Kitty’ in site,” she wrote.

Another local resident, Heather Roche, also objected on the grounds that in 2017, there was “no excuse for not inscribing the correct name on the memorials rather than one connected with a fictional creation.”

Frances Moreton, director of the War Memorials Trust, said: “It is evident that for a lot of people, it is very important that what they deem to be the accurate name is recorded.

“People can get quite caught up in that. The other thing is the style and positioning of the name.  The others recorded on the monument are listed alongside their regiment and we always encourage people to add names in an existing style.

“The name has also been placed very close to the unveiling date making it look in some way linked. It is an unfortunate situation and it’s a shame these things weren't considered in advance.”

Burrator Parish Council said it had withdrawn its application for retrospective planning permission in the hope that all sides can come to an “amicable” agreement.

Ms Robinson said the fact that Phelps had used the same name as a character in The Crimson Field was a pure coincidence and had nothing to do with the girl from Meavy.

She added: “After all this, we are now expected to pay for the original stone to be altered and the damage repaired and buy a new piece of granite.

“It’s crackers. Bureaucracy gone mad. Her family, who all called her Kitty by the way, are distraught.”