The War Memorial
The First World War memorial on the side of the Thompson Pump House was designed and made by the Northern Irish artist Sophia Rosamond Praeger (1867-1954). Praeger is today one of the best-known and most-celebrated of all Northern Ireland’s artists and designers. She worked as a professional illustrator and sculptor from the late nineteenth century until the early 1950s. She completed several war memorials throughout Northern Ireland, in town squares, schools, hospitals and churches but only one in the region’s shipyards. The shipyard war memorial was commissioned by Frank Workman, who had founded, along with George Clark, Workman, Clark & Co in 1880. They Workman family were important patrons of S.R. Praeger and she had also worked for several other families associated with Belfast’s great shipyards. In 1914, Praeger completed memorial sculptures to Thomas Andrews, the celebrated Harland & Wolff engineer who died on-board the Titanic in 1912, in Comber, Co. Down, and in Belfast at the Ulster Reform Club. She had earlier completed a memorial fountain to Walter Henry Wilson, one of the original founder members of Harland & Wolff, installed in the Newtownbreda suburb of south Belfast.
S.R. Praeger’s war memorial for Workman, Clark & Co was completed in 1919 and installed on a wall on the right-hand side of the main entrance to the head office in the North Yard. It is without doubt one of her most important public art-works. It was commissioned by Frank Workman and his wife to commemorate the men from their Belfast shipyard who had fought in the Great War, and especially their only son Edward Workman, who had been one of the managing directors of the shipyard, and who had died from wounds sustained in action on the 26 January 1916. The design consisted of a medallion portrait of Edward Workman M.C. 5th R.I.R. 1914-1916 flanked by the names of over 120 men from the shipyard who died in the war, this was supported by a pictorial frieze which told the story of the men from enlistment to battlefield. The frieze was divided into three sections; the first showed the men at work in the shipyard; the second showed them leaving their homes after enlistment; and the third showed wounded men being tended by medics in the field of battle.
The memorial was unveiled by Sir Edward Carson on the 8 August 1919. The inscription above the memorial reads, ‘Eternal Honour giver Hail and Farewell to those who died in that full splendour of heroic pride that we might live. In memory of the officers and men of the Belfast Shipyard who fell in the Great War 1914-1918’. In his speech Sir Edward Carson stated that, ‘I always think that when you unveil a memorial it reminds you of a day when you see the clouds hiding the sun, and at last the clouds break away and the sun gives you the warmth and the comfort of life’. After the closure of the Workman, Clark & Co shipyard, in September 1935, the First World War memorial was relocated to the Thompson Pump House where it can be seen today.
Originally unveiled by Sir Edward Carson MP, it was rededicated for public display on Friday 16 May 2008 by the First Minister of Northern Ireland The Rt Hon Rev Dr Ian R K Paisley MP MLA.
A list of all the names on the memorial can be downloaded by clicking here. We would be very interested in hearding from anyone who may know any of the names on the list.