Wigan Album

The main entrance to St Wilfrid's Church is through the Peace Gate, which was built by public subsciption to honour the dead of the First World War 1914-1918. The names of those who fell in that war are inscibed on tablets to which were added the names of those who died in the war of 1939-1945. In a niche above the gate on the inside there is a statue which is said to represent St Wilfrid.
The gate was officially unveiled in 1926, and it may be that this photograph was taken on that occasion.

As a war memorial the Peace Gate is unique in that many of the coal mines in the area installed bronze plaques inside the gates carrying the names of the miners they had lost in the Great War.

For the record: The bronze plaques from the five Wigan Coal & Iron Co's pits in Standish to be found in the gatehouse were originally installed at the pits where the men commemorated worked. The Company installed them at 19 sites - their pits, and the Kirkless Iron & Steel Works at Aspull. When the pits and works closed most of the plaques were removed for safe-keeping elsewhere - three of the Standish ones being put up in the old Standish with Langtree UD Offices. When that was closed they were moved to the gatehouse - to be joined later by two others which had gone into private hands.
Only one plaque - at Hewlett Pits in Westhoughton - is still to be found where it was originally installed in 1921. Two - Meadow Pit, Haigh, and Alexandra & Lindsay Pits at Whelley - are lost.