Skip to content

Plaque unveiled for Belgian World War One workers

Gerry Jackson,in Birtleyand
Evie Lake,North East and Cumbria
News imageGerry Jackson/BBC A large blue circular plaque on a slanted rock face. There is a woman with short, grey hair placing a poppy wreath down to rest on the bottom of the rock, there is a second one next to it. She is wearing a red poppy on her dark blue jacket. The legs of a crowd of people surrounding the plaque are visible, all standing on a patch of grass. The base of a black microphone stand is to the left.Gerry Jackson/BBC
The plaque was unveiled at St Joseph's Catholic Church on Sunday

A plaque commemorating Belgian World War One soldiers and civilians who worked in a British ammunition factory has been unveiled.

Less than a year into the war, Britain was running out of artillery shells so wounded Belgian soldiers who had been brought over to recover staffed the newly opened factory in 1916 in Birtley, in Gateshead.

Alongside refugees who had fled their home country, the Belgian community in Birtley was 6,000 strong, with most contributing to the war effort.

Writer Dirk Musschoot said despite not being on the front lines it was about "ordinary people playing their part in a much bigger story".

The Belgians lived in their own village which was called Elisabethville, named after the Belgian queen.

News imageGerry Jackson/BBC Dirk Musschoot standing in front of a microphone, looking down at some notes which are on a black lectern. He has short, grey hair and glasses and is wearing dark blue jeans, a navy blazer and light shirt underneath. There is a group of people in black standing to the right, one is a woman with grey hair holding a wreath of poppies in front of her. The rock with the plaque has been covered in a Union Flag and the black, yellow and red Belgian flag. Their is another Union Flag behind Musschoot on a black metal railing.Gerry Jackson/BBC
Dirk Musschoot said the Birtley Belgians contributed to the war effort

The village was run on strict military lines and most worked long and hard hours to produce enough shells.

By Armistice Day, the factory had manufactured more than two million.

"By being here they could play their part in the war effort," Musschoot said.

"They were wounded, they were out of order so to say, and now they could find a way to be someone."

Most of the Belgians left Birtley as soon as the war ended, save for a few dozen who had fallen in love with locals.

News imageGerry Jackson/BBC A woman with grey, short hair crouched down in front of one of the grey soldier's graves. She is reaching down where there are two metal poppy decorations at the base of the grave, along with a wooden cross with a poppy in the middle of it. In her other hand she is holding another large poppy. There is an identical grey grave next to it on the right with the same poppy decorations. About four people stand around the graves, with only their legs visible. A black metal fence is in the background.Gerry Jackson/BBC
The Belgian soldiers have gravestones but the civilians are in unmarked graves

But nearly 80 of the Birtley Belgians had died by the end of the war and while the soldiers were given headstones in local cemeteries, the civilian refugees have nothing to mark their graves.

Musschoot said they initially will have had wooden crosses, but the wood will have rotted over the years.

"Amongst those military headstones there are civilians - men, women, children - who fled the war 100 years ago in Belgium, hoping to find something better in England and then died here," Musschoot said.

"This is very important.

"War is not only about heroic stories of soldiers who've done this and that, but also about ordinary people and my heart really goes out to those men, women and children," he said.

Marijke Weama travelled from Belgium to see the memorial to those buried at St Joseph's Catholic Church unveiled on Sunday.

"We can't forget them and we have to honour them, especially the ones that died in another country," she said.

Follow BBC North East on X, Facebook, Nextdoor and Instagram and listen to Radio Newcastle on BBC Sounds.

More on this story