Fylde Memorial Arboretum and Community Woodland
war memorial in the UK
Fylde Memorial Arboretum and Community Woodland is a site of remembrance at Bispham, Blackpool, Lancashire, England. It is the only one of its kind outside the National Memorial Arboretum, Alrewas, Staffordshire.
Its stated aim is to provide the service associations, and the people of Blackpool and the Fylde, with a place of peace and beauty in which to remember their fallen comrades and loved ones.
Origins
The idea for the arboretum and community woodland was conceived by Don Aiken, the vice-president of the Fylde Ex-Service Liaison Committee in the summer of 2008. Investigating the possibility of planting a memorial tree to commemorate comrades of the D-Day and Normandy Veterans, an article in the Blackpool Gazette from the Forestry Commission offered to fund the planting of woodland areas. After he contacted them they agreed to fund the arboretum, and subsequently, Blackpool Council agreed to provide the land.
History
The arboretum was unveiled on 23 February 2009 following a £14,000 grant from the Forestry Commission English Woodland Grant Scheme and funds from First TransPennine Express. Blackpool Council's Parks Service designed the plans for the memorial woodland, while rangers worked with local school children and community groups to plant trees.
Officially opened on 26 June 2009 with a service of dedication, the arboretum has a main memorial plaque as well as 16 smaller plinths. It is run by the Arboretum Committee, an offshoot of the Fylde Ex-Service Liaison Committee, with the aim of providing the service associations, and the people of Blackpool and the Fylde, with "a place of peace and beauty in which to remember their fallen comrades and loved ones".
“Fylde Memorial Arboretum and Community Woodland” enters the record as war memorial in the UK. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Fylde, Memorial and Arboretum can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5511217. Authority coordinates are 53.848, -3.027. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2008 and 2009.
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This entry incorporates text from “Fylde Memorial Arboretum and Community Woodland” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.