Bangor war memorial

Bangor City crest

Bangor war memorial

This memorial stands on the opposite side of Deiniol Road from the North Wales Heroes’ Memorial and is devoted to the war dead of Bangor. To read details of the people named, and some others who were omitted from the memorial, please select a category below.

The main memorial lists the local people who died in active service in the First World War and Second World War. Behind it is a slate memorial listing members of the Royal Garrison Artillery who died in both wars. The RGA recruited many men from North Wales. We have included the RGA names in our lists but in some cases the information provided on the memorial is vague.

Photo of WW1 memorial in Bangor CathedralAnother memorial (pictured here) to the local dead of the First World War is inside the cathedral. It was designed by Giles Gilbert Scott and features three tablets surrounded by a frame carved in Forest of Dean Pennant stone by W Clarke of Cardiff. It was moved by train to Bangor, where contractor Watkin Jones & Sons helped to install it in April 1921.

Many Bangor men died while serving in the Merchant Navy in the Second World War. Our lists include many who are not named on the war memorial. Some of the Merchant Navy men died when their ship, SS Pamela, sank in the Bristol Channel with all hands lost. This was one of the slate-carrying ships of Lord Penrhyn, who lived on the outskirts of Bangor. SS Pamela was registered in Beaumaris and was carrying grain when it sank.

The other major landowning family in the area suffered a bigger loss early in the First World War when Sir Robert George Vivian Duff was killed in action with the Second Life Guards. He was the only son of Sir Charles Garden Assheton-Smith, First Baronet of Vaynol Park, Bangor. Vaynol Park is now known as Y Faenol, venue for outdoor concerts and other events.

Also named on the memorial is Able Seaman Henry John Gillard, who was mentioned in despatches in the First World War and died in service in the Second World War. He held the Belgian Croix de Guerre.

Ronald Huw Rowland was killed near Jerusalem in 1918, aged 19. Three days before his death he sent home a poem he had written which appears to foreshadow his death. You can read the poem on our page in his memory.

Major Arnold Dargie, also named on the memorial, played for Wales’ international amateur football side.

Among those who are not named on the memorial is Robert Roberts, who trained as a “boy, second class” on HMS Impregnable in Plymouth but died, aged 16, the day before the First World War ended. His grave in Glanadda cemetery, Bangor, is maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.

With thanks to Adrian Hughes, of the Home Front Museum, Llandudno, and Byron Jones, of the Merchant Navy Association (Wales). Also to Sue Smith and Michael Statham.

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First World War (Surnames A-F)

First World War (Surnames G-J)
First World War (Surnames K-S)
First World War (Surnames T-Z)

Second World War (A-J)
Second World War (K-Z)

Other MILITARY HiPoints in this area:
D-Day engineer's home, Bangor - Hugh Iorys Hughes conceived the transportable Mulberry harbours
EH Jones’ home, Bangor – he wrote a best-seller about being a prisoner of war in Turkey

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