A STONE war memorial erected 20 years ago thanks to the people of Sheffield has been saved from demolition – and returned to the widow of the World War II soldier who created it.
The memorial, which had been at Sheffield Hallam University's Psalter Lane campus since 1988, was carved by stonemason Geoff Lidster.
Geoff completed the work in recognition of the hospitality shown to his company by local residents when they were billeted in Sheffield at the start of the war.
In 1939 Geoff's unit the 272 Field Company of the Royal Engineers occupied what was then the Bluecoat School in the city centre.
By 1940 250 men, many away from home for the first time, lived with families in the houses surrounding the site. In the same year, the unit was sent to France to fight and their stay in the city came to an end.
Geoff, and many of his fellow soldiers, never forgot the kindness shown to him by Sheffielders and decades later decided to put up the memorial at the site.
But when the campus was vacated last year Geoff's widow Thelma, who regularly returned to Sheffield from her home in Worksop to visit the site, wrote to Sheffield Hallam to ask that the memorial be recovered.
Nigel Thurlow, head gardener at the university, worked with his team to remove the memorial and return it to Thelma.
Thelma said: "A lot of the soldiers were so young when they came to Sheffield that the local residents became almost a family away from home.
"Their kindness stayed with Geoff even after he had left the Army and he wanted to recognise them in his own way.
"The memorial was so important to Geoff and it felt totally wrong to let it get broken up. I couldn't believe it when Nigel and his team turned up with it but I am so pleased it's been saved. I will probably put it in my garden as reminder of Geoff, who passed away five years ago."
Nigel said: "As soon as we realised the significance of the memorial we moved to get it returned to Thelma.
"It's so easy for things like this to go unnoticed, as buildings pass between owners, but I am really pleased we managed to rescue it."
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