The memorial to Capt Lancelot Studholme was re-erected on Armistice Day.

Birr World War 1 memorial re-erected after conservation work

An enormous wooden cross commemorating a Birr army officer killed in World War One that was taken down earlier this year for conservation work has been re-erected.

The 6.6m memorial to Captain Lancelot Studholme is believed to be Ireland's largest free standing oak cross. It was erected by his grieving family shortly after his death in 1916 on their estate in Ballyegan, outside Birr.
Local historian Stephen Callaghan in conjunction with Offaly County Council's heritage officer Amanda Pedlow led the effort to get the cross conserved.

Cut from a tree on the Studholme family's estate, the cross had become badly decayed by wood worm in recent years. A conservation engineer commissioned by Offaly County Council estimated that it would fall within the next five years unless it was taken down for preservation work, which entailed injecting it with resin.

Paying tribute to the Tynan family, the owners of the land on which the cross is located, and Offaly County Council, Mr Callaghan says that the work will preserve this “nationally important” monument for at least 150 years.

He also revealed that aptly, but purely by coincidence, the cross was taken down for repairs on September 9, the 103rd anniversary of Capt Studholme's death in France and was re-erected on Armistice Day, November 11.

“While the cross commemorates an individual it is a testament to generation of promising young men who went to fight in the Great War and didn’t return,” Mr Callaghan said.

Capt Studholme, who served in the 7th Battalion, Leinster Regiment, was 31 when he was killed in action ouside the French town of Ginchy. At the time of his death it was reported that he was gunned down while coming to the aid of his injured batman, a man named Harte, who had been an employee on the family's estate at Ballyegan.

An article in The King’s County Chronicle after his death commended Capt Lancelot on his bravery.

“The manner of his death too, was one that should never be forgotten, revealing as it did a self-sacrificing devotion to a fellow human being.”