Menin Gate makeover with Portland

By Geoff Moore Award-winning travel writer thetraveltrunk.net

Portland stone is to play an important role in one of Flanders’ most iconic memorials to the fallen of the First World War. After 100 years of battling the elements, the Menin Gate in Ypres is to receive a makeover. The monument is being shrouded in scaffolding as part of a two-year project to restore it.

A daily Last Post ceremony is held every evening in this Belgium town.

At 8pm every night the traffic is halted and the last post ceremony is normally played under the middle of the arch. But now the ceremony has been moved to just in front of the East entrance.

Overseeing this whole building work project on behalf of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission is Sarah Camerlynck, who has spent the last two years inspecting the building, compiling reports for the architects and the construction teams working on the project. Some parts of the building have weathered well, but where damage has been done it will need to be restored or replaced and this is where calls will be made on the Portland Stone.

The prized precious name panels are made from Portland Stone and will certainly be one area that will also be further inspected in fine detail now the scaffold is up.

Here 54,586 names of the fallen without any known grave are inscribed. Weathering may have reduced the legibility of so many names carefully inscribed, which is where letter cutting masons will attempt to re-cut them in situ.

Sarah Camerlynck said:

“All the name panels are of Portland Stone and we assess each panel. We can even feel the stone to test where there is any damage. In general, the panels are in quite good condition, however we may have to do small restorations and interventions.”

Nearby at Arras, just over the border in France, is a specialist facility run by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC).

Across the world the CWGC looks after 23,000 cemeteries or war memorials including here at Navy Cemetery at Portland.

Portland company Albion Stone has been supplying gravestone blanks of Portland Stone to the CWGC for many years. Now the stone is hewn from a mine and not an open style quarry. The CWGC requires around 2,000 headstones each year and the policy is to reuse and re-carve them if possible.

Gareth Hardware from the