During the First World War there was a popular movement for making wayside shrines, which was distinct from the retrospective parish and civic war memorials erected later. The first street shrine was built in mid 1916 in South Hackney in London. The subsequent movement was prompted by a series of articles in the London Evening News, and by the support of Selfridges department store. The wartime evangelism of the Church of England played a significant role. After Queen Mary visited the East End shrines, the movement spread rapidly thoughout the country. So popular was the concept, that standard shrines were soon commercially available.

These wayside shrines, at first makeshift, were often sited away from the usual places of worship, and were most common on city streets. Significantly - and unlike, for instance, later civic war memorials - the shrines commemorated men from small geographical areas, and from very close-knit communities. The shrines usually comprised fresh flowers, the Union Jack and other flags, a cross or crucifix, and sometimes appropriate patriotic or sentimental engravings cut from magazines. But the most important component was the Roll of Honour, listing those who had died and also those who were serving in the forces. For the latter, the shrines offered protection - both religious and superstitious. The shrines were a spontaneous phenomenon, perhaps tapping into folk memories of flower-decked holy wells. In looking for an origin at the time, one writer suggested that soldiers fighting overseas in Catholic districts had been impressed by how providence seemed to preserve many crosses and shrines amidst the devastation of war, leading them 'to desire for their own land the blessing of similar wayside crosses.' But the shrines were conceived and created by those at home, and were understood to be in the charge of the community's women. From the outset, the shrines were controversial, charged by some as being manifestations of 'popish superstition' or showing 'affectations of ritualism'. Following the desecration of a shrine in Ilford in 1916, a correspondent wrote to the Christian Recorder magazine in favour of the action.

The shrine movement culminated in the Great War Shrine in Hyde Park, built up of floral offerings laid by - it was claimed - 200,000 people between 4 and 15 August 1918. If this is remiscent of the mass of floral tributes following Princess Diana's death in 1997, then as expressions of grief, the shrines of the Great War have strong parallels with the growing contemporary trend for street shrines, spontaneously generated by local communities in response to present-day events - such as the remembrance site generated at King's Cross following the terrorist bombings in London in 2005.

Lost war shrines of Hampshire: at Brockenhurst, Hamble, and Hartley Witney. At Brockenhurst, although the brick structure does not survive, the interior shrine, which resembles a standard design commissioned from architects Bodley & Hare by the London Evening News, is now in the local church. Photos: Steve Jarvis.

Further information
Two full accounts of the war shrines built in city streets are given in the following books, on which the first part of this article heavily draws:
Mark Connelly, The Great War, Memory and Ritual: Commemoration in the City and East London 1916 -1939, Royal Historical Society/Boydell Press, 2001.
Alex King, Memorials of the Great War in Britain, Berg, 1998.

 
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