BUILDING LYCH-GATE

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 951, 19 April 1930, Page 5

BUILDING LYCH-GATE

GOVERNMENT MEMORIAL j AT HOWICK WAIKATO WAR VICTIMS To complete a proposal which has been in view for some time. the Department of Internal Affairs is about to build the lych-gate at the entrance to the churchyard at All Saints’ Church, Ilowick, in memory of G 4 British soldiers and friendly natives, vie- ! tirns of the Waikato War, who lie buried there. The memorial will be somewhat similar in design to the lych-gate at St. Aidan’s Church, Itemuera. Nine feet square, and about 12 feet to the ridge of the roof, the gate will possess four gables. Unpainted jarrali beams will surmount a base of roughly-squared bluestone. Inside will be a tablet bearing the names of the men. There will be double gates to the road. In tho Middle Ages the English employed lych-gates as a temporary depository for bodies brought for burial. In the past few years the Department of Internal Affairs has been paying attention to an essential work if New Zealand is to retain reminders of the services of the Imperial and the volunteer soldiery, assisted by a large number of Maori tribes which were friendly to the Europeans, in quelling the natives who rose against the occupiers of their lands, and unjust land purchases. Possibly the best memorial to the British forces is the massive stairway of stonework, adorned with a .British lion and tablets bearing the names of fallen soldiers, and recalling incidents of tho skirmishes with the Maoris, leading to Sarjeant Art Gallery* 'Wanganui. \V anganui also possesses tho finest memorial to the Maori soldiers who fought for the British Empire in the Great War. Renovations have been carried out by tho department in the cemeteries near the principal battlefields, and commemorative inscriptions provided where necessary.