SAMLESBURY Memorial Hall, has received a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund for a project, Samlesbury Soldiers from the Great War.

The aim is to preserve the memories and heritage of the soldiers from the community, who lost their lives in WWI.

Volunteers will collect photographs, war records, newspaper clippings, documents, letters and photos of keepsakes, as well as family tales passed down, to help them build a picture of life during 1914-18 and make a permanent exhibition of their findings.

The information will be recorded and an information board for each soldier will become part of the permanent fabric of the hall — a flagpole will also be erected An archive is set to be created which everyone will be able to access and contribute information about those who fell.

Brian Taylor, war memorial hall chair of trustees, said: “We are thrilled to have received the support of the Heritage Lottery Fund and look forward to working with volunteers in remembering those who were lost 100 years ago.”

Head of lottery funding in the North West, Sara Hilton, said: “The impact of the First World War was far-reaching, touching and shaping every corner of the UK and beyond.

“The Heritage Lottery Fund has already invested more than £52million in projects — large and small — that are marking this global centenary; with our small grants programme, we are enabling even more communities like those in Samlesbury to explore the continuing legacy of this conflict and help local people to broaden their understanding of how it has shaped our modern world.”

The hall was originally conceived as a facility for men returning from the First World War and a minute of a meeting from November 1919 reads ‘That this great meeting of the inhabitants and ex-servicemen of Samlesbury warmly supports the work of the Village Clubs Association, and urges on the people of this district the necessity for establishing without delay a club and the building of a War Memorial Hall where there will be no class distinction, but where all can meet for common recreation, improvement and social intercourse and to be managed by the people themselves.’ The land was donated in 1922 by the family of Lt Col Turville-Petre and it was opened in 1928. It has a memorial plaque to the fallen of WWI, but does not include every soldier from Samlesbury who was killed in the conflict — the project now aims to right this wrong.

There are further memorials in the churches of St Leonard-the-Less, and St Maryand St John Southworth.

A commemorative lunch, with readings and music of the era, on Sunday August 3, 100 years after the outbreak of the war, will launch the project.

A series of workshops will then be staged to discuss findings and inspire volunteers to carry out their own further historical research in the historic village.