The Boleyn Ground Memorial Garden closing ceremony will be held this Saturday at 10 am on Saturday 18th January ahead of the Premier League home fixture against Everton. This date and time had been chosen by the club to try to maximise the number of friends and family members of those remembered who can attend.
The service will be conducted by the Club Chaplain and will be followed by teas, coffees and biscuits served at the Barratt London Site Office on the development, close to the Memorial Garden. Representatives of both West Ham United and Barratt London will be on hand to support those in attendance, should they have any questions.
The ceremony will also give friends and relatives one further final opportunity to collect any items which have been left at the garden, should they wish to. Any remaining unclaimed items will be carefully and respectfully collected after the ceremony, and stored on a temporary basis, while every effort is made to reunite family members with any items. Any items that remain unclaimed after this process will be added to a memorial capsule, which will be buried at the site ahead of the area reopening.
After the ceremony, to provide families with a temporary area of reflection, a memorial bench will be installed on Priory Road. At the end of January 2020, hoardings will be erected around the Memorial Garden to protect the area during the redevelopment work. This will enable the existing site to be necessarily reconfigured during the redevelopment. This will mean that there is no access to the current memorial area until the new Memorial Garden reopens, which is anticipated to be in 2022.
The existing trees and soil will remain intact, with the new planter encompassing the existing soil. As communicated by thew club in the summer, the proposal considered all feedback from family members. The club worked closely with Barratt London on the design principles and considerations.
The Memorial Garden area will become part of the public space when all landscaping is complete, providing a lasting, fitting tribute to loved ones remembered there, enabling families to come at their leisure. The Club will update on the final designs of the Memorial Garden area at the appropriate time ahead of the Garden reopening in 2022.