A VILLAGE war memorial modelled on the Cenotaph in London is set for renovation in its 100th anniversary year.

West Dean Parish Council has been given the green light to go ahead with restoration and cleaning work costing £9,700 on the Grade II-listed Bream war memorial.

As well as commemorating the fallen in two world wars, it is also a focus for the Forest of Dean branch of the Burma Star Association, having been dedicated in 1995 to the memory of those who fought in the Burma campaign of 1941-45.

The Forest sandstone memorial will be cleaned of limescale, moss, dirt and carbon deposits using an eco-friendly super-heated and low pressure steam.

Loose mortar will also be replaced and block work realigned and stabilised.

The three plaques on the cenotaph will also be sent to a Cardiff workshop for cleaning and repainting, with the Burma Star plaque then to be mounted directly onto the memorial.

Forest Council conservation adviser David Haigh has told planners: "I have pleasure in supporting the application that will ensure the long-term preservation of this prominently located and sensitive monument."

The memorial was listed in 2017 after volunteers from the village’s library researched its history and made an application.

It was unveiled a century ago last week, on Sunday, September 11, 1921 by General Tyler, and dedicated by parish vicar Rev CHT Wright.

It includes the names of 21 local soldiers who gave their lives in the First World War, and 25 service people from the Second World War, including two women.

Doreen Brooks, known as Dora, was in the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) and died from TB in 1946, and it was thought her war service had been a factor in her final illness.

Dorothy Hancocks was a munitions worker who died in 1940 from acute poisoning from TNT.

Researchers at the library were ’greatly helped’ by local historian Ian Hendy’s book Retrieving Wenty’s Sturty Bird - The Story of Bream Cenotaph 1921-2001.

Wenty was a young Bream lad who lost his stick - a ’sturty bird’ that you whacked through the air as far as you could - inside the partially constructed monument.

Volunteer researcher Paul Stephens-Wood said the monument’s cost of £750 was paid for by public subscription from the Bream parish, including £250 from the owners of Princess Royal Colliery, the village’s major employer, £250 from the employed miners (deducted from wages), plus the Soldiers and Sailors Presentation Fund and door-to-door collections.

Sited on Sun Tump opposite the Rising Sun pub, it was constructed in local sandstone from the United Stone Quarry in Parkend and constructed by HJ Walker of Bream.

Mr Stephens-Wood added: "The Bream memorial was designed as a smaller copy of the national Cenotaph at Whitehall in London.

"The architects were Kennard and Kennard of Grey’s Inn Square, London, and the main differences in design with the Whitehall Cenotaph is that the Bream monument has a stone cross set into the north side above the inscription and list of names of those who died in World War One, and an inscription "To our glorious dead" not simply "The Glorious Dead"."