Work to reinstate the Hearts’ War Memorial to its original location at Haymarket junction will begin today.
During the First World War, Hearts players signed up en masse to the 16th Royal Scots – commonly referred to as ‘McCrae’s Battalion’. They were the first football team to join up together, while players from Hibs, Falkirk, Dunfermline and Raith Rovers were among the others who also served.
By the end of the war, seven Hearts players – Duncan Currie, John Allan, James Boyd, Tom Gracie, Ernest Ellis, James Speedie and Harry Wattie had all lost their lives.
In 1922, in honour of the Hearts team and the men they fought beside, a clock tower war memorial was built in the Edinburgh’s Haymarket.
The memorial was moved five years ago to accommodate tram works, and last week Transport Convener, Councillor Lesley Hinds, and the Managing Director of Hearts, David Southern, placed a time capsule in the base of the memorial. The iconic memorial will be carefully rebuilt over the next six weeks.
John graduated from Telford College in 2010 with an HNC in Practical Journalism and since then he worked for the North Edinburgh News, The Southern Reporter, the Irish News Review and The Edinburgh Reporter. In addition he has been published in the Edinburgh Evening News and the Hibernian FC Programme.
