St Anne’s First World War memorial was the gift of Councillor William P. Wethered, a prominent member and considerable benefactor of the church. Wethered lived at Redcourt on Carnatic Road and was the son-in-law of John Temple, one of St Anne’s most important benefactors.

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The memorial was commissioned in 1917 from J. Wippell & Co. of Exeter, a firm renowned for its ecclesiastical furnishings and memorial work. Wethered died later that year and therefore did not live to see the completed memorial.

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The Revd William Simms, then Vicar of St Anne’s, recorded that the memorial was dedicated in March 1918, several months before the end of the war. At that stage the names of the fallen were displayed only in temporary form, and parishioners were asked to submit additions and corrections before the permanent record was completed. Despite this process, a number of inaccuracies remained in the completed memorial. Such errors and omissions were not uncommon: First World War memorials were local initiatives, and the names to be commemorated were often gathered from families and parishioners rather than from a single official record.

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The memorial therefore began not simply as a commemoration after the war, but as an act of remembrance created while the conflict was still being fought and while the full extent of the parish’s losses was not yet known.