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Like many towns, Chepstow boasts a fine war memorial, a column bearing the names of its many victims of the Great War. But, unusually, it also commemorates the conflict with a German naval gun. Generations of children have played on the gun under the placid gaze of their parents, blissfully ignorant of its grim history.

In 1921 Chepstow insisted on celebrating their local hero William Charles Williams VC with a naval gun, in remembrance of his outstanding valour at Gallipoli. A piece of field artillery was duly supplied, but this was rejected, and finally a naval gun was procured from a captured German U-Boat. At the time the authorities were somewhat evasive about its provenance, and reassured the townspeople that although it was indeed from a vanquished U-Boat, the vessel had not succeeded in sinking any British vessels.

It now appears that is far from the case. The chance appearance of some glass photographic plates of a German submarine on display at Newport led local historian Brian Rendell to trace whether there might not be a connection between the Chepstow gun and the Newport vessel. Frustratingly, the photograph did not reveal the boat鈥檚 number. However, piecing this evidence with other photographs, it now appears that the gun was taken from the UB-91, a German submarine that was certainly active around the Welsh coast and the Bristol Channel, and which had inflicted enormous loss of life by torpedoing at least three.

Location: Beaufort Square, Chepstow, Monmouthshire, NP16 5EP
Images courtesy of Brian Rendell