NEIL BENNETT reports on the fund-raising success and hard-work – even by some doing community service – to make a garden in Croydon Cemetery a fitting memorial to the 39 people killed when their aeroplane crashed into a Norwegian mountain 65 years ago
Fitting memorial: the Lanfranc garden at Croydon Cemetery has been repaied and replanted
Work is well underway towards restoring the memorial to 34 Croydon schoolboys who died in a plane crash in Norway in 1961.
Two teachers from Lanfranc School and three aircrew also lost their lives when the aircraft taking them on a summer camping holiday crashed into a mountain near Stavanger.
Thanks to crowdfunding by the current Archbishop Lanfranc Academy and a tireless campaign by the niece of one of the victims of the crash, money has been raised to replant the Memorial Garden in Croydon Cemetery and restore the stonework. It had been showing signs of wear, to the distress of the families whose lives were changed forever by the tragedy.
They will join friends, current Lanfranc pupils and staff, the Norwegian Ambassador and others invited to the Memorial’s unveiling, which is planned for July 6.
The Stavanger crash, on August 9, 1961, was one of the most shocking civil air disasters in the country’s history, with the Croydon Advertiser telling readers in its editorial: “Rarely in peacetime has an English town suffered such a tragedy as overwhelmed Croydon last week.”
The suffering of the families was made worse because the official investigation never found the cause, concluding only that “the cause of this accident was a deviation from the prescribed flight path for reasons unknown”.
The Archbishop Lanfranc Academy, on Mitcham Road, near Thornton Heath, which succeeded the original Lanfranc School, has done everything it can to make sure the boys are not forgotten, with a Memorial Day every July when all new Year 7 pupils go to the memorial garden and learn about the sad chapter in the school’s history.
The Academy’s principal, Simon Trehearn, has watched the fundraising appeal edge beyond its original £60,000 target: “We’ve been overwhelmed by the response that we’ve had – it’s been really humbling to read the messages of support, and hear about the impact the disaster had, and still has, on so many people.”
Neice’s duty: Suzy Stowell has done much work to drive the campaign
The campaign has been driven by Sanderstead resident Suzy Stowell, whose uncle, Geoffrey Crouch, was one of the Lanfranc boys who died. He was 15 years old.
Stowell set out to do something about the state of the memorial when her family scattered their father’s ashes there two years ago.
The Croydon Playing Fields Association, The ICCM Recycling of Metals Scheme and the Burns Price Foundation contributed generously, as did individual families, friends and the broader community worldwide.
A group of helpers gathered in March to begin replanting the garden, including family members, friends, volunteers from the gardening group that works at St Peter’s Church, South Croydon and staff from Croydon Cemetery, who gave up their Saturday.
Even young offenders doing community service stayed beyond their allotted time to help because they felt it was such a worthy cause.
Suzy Stowell struggled to contact 19 of the 34 families hit by the tragedy but a woman from Devon who read about the appeal on social media messaged to say that she was a genealogical researcher and offered to help free of charge. She traced six of the families, at least two of whom will now be coming to the re-opening.
Hard work: help with the replanting has come from several groups, including some unexpected quarters
“I’m just thoroughly delighted with the success of the appeal,” Stowell says.
“Not just for our family but for all the families, the school and the wider community. What I have learned along the way is that this garden means so much to so many people. It’s the visible result of the community coming together.”
The fact that the Stavanger disaster is remembered at all by those not directly affected is largely due to one woman, Rosalind Jones, née Green, who grew up in Norbury and whose 13-year-old brother Quentin died in the crash.
Quentin won the last place on the aeroplane on the toss of a coin.
Jones has written two exhaustively researched books in memory of the boys, while also trying to do what the authorities in the 1960s failed to do: find the cause of the crash.
Jones was awarded the British Empire Medal in last year’s King’s birthday honours list “for services to the victims of the Stavanger air disaster”.
Research volume: Rosalind Jones’s research has kept the memory of the boys alive
This week, Jones told Inside Croydon: “I am obviously delighted that the memorial appeal has raised so much money. It has made people in Croydon, and all over the UK, aware again of what happened 65 years ago, because it had been forgotten and very soon afterwards was sort of tucked away out of sight and wasn’t mentioned.
“If the relatives hadn’t kept it in sight, it would have been completely forgotten.”
Rosalind Jones has now written a third book about the crash, due to be published in a Kindle edition in August, on the 65th anniversary of the crash. She has continued to explore the archives in Norway. The story of the Lanfranc Boys and the Stavanger air disaster is not over.
Read more: Mysteries behind the Lanfranc air crash could finally be solved
Read more: Archbishop Lanfranc, the Normans’ first Archbishop of Canterbury
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