The first ever complete war memorial for a Suffolk town, which covers both world wars, has been launched at a special event.

The new virtual war memorial for the Lowestoft area has been unveiled.

Rev Damon Rogers - the vicar at St. Andrew's Church in Lowestoft - has worked with Joe Thompson, from community organisation Lowestoft Old and Now, and with support from Lowestoft Town Council to create a new virtual war memorial for the Lowestoft area.

The new website 'Our Fallen' was launched at The Grit, Lowestoft Centre for the Arts & Heritage in Old Nelson Street in front of an enthralled audience that included historians, councillors and Waveney MP Peter Aldous.

The event also included an insight into the depth of research that was carried out to expand the website from a single page listing to a full website with more than 2,000 pages - one for each casualty.

Introducing the website Mr Thompson said: "The inspiration for the 'Our Fallen' project came from a similar Felixstowe project - Felixstowe Remembers.

"What they achieved seemed to me to bring history to life and made me wonder if we could do something similar for Lowestoft?

"We are delighted that at present over 2,000 people have been traced, researched, and are recorded on our virtual war memorial."

With the 'Our Fallen' memorial giving details - including home addresses - of people from Lowestoft and the surrounding villages that were lost in the two world wars, it honours them "remembering their sacrifice".

Mr Thompson added: "During the project we discovered 300 new photographs and 50 new family memories and found over 100 Lowestoft people who had never before been recorded on any memorial.

"Now with the support from Lowestoft Town Council we have been able to create a whole new website to display extra details of all of them."

The pages also include buttons for maps, medals and memorials.

'A great resource'

Rev Rogers added: "We have used primary sources and secondary sources and we can verify all the personal details on the website.

"We have also added family memories - shown in red on the website - that we cannot fact check.

"We have been able to use all the available memorialisation from across the town.

"The Commonwealth War Graves Commission records are a massively important resource and we used them together with church war memorials and the Register of Seafarers Deaths to compile a complete record.

"We have included a lot of search facilities and Joe has developed interactive maps so that you can see where the people lived.

"This is going to be a great resource for genealogists, schools and military historians.

"For the future we hope to develop a dedicated section about Lowestoft women in the world wars."

Visit its website for details at ourfallen.lowestoftoldandnow.org