Seven men have reportedly been arrested after a pair of World War One plaques disappeared from the grounds of Christ Church Luton in Chatham.
The plaques went missing on Friday night, to the distress of vicar, the Rev Andrea Leonard, who described the theft as “terrible” in comments to the BBC.
On Wednesday each plaques were discovered in several scrap yards in Essex. Sadly, one in every of the plaques has been described as “substantially damaged”.
According to Kent Police, two men of their mid-twenties from around Dartford were arrested. Subsequently five more people were arrested, with ages starting from 22 to 51 years old.
Rev Leondard publicly praised the unknown one that found one in every of the plaques and alerted the authorities.
“Hats off to the person, who desires to obviously remain anonymous, but who had the integrity to phone the police and say ‘I’ve got something here that you just want,” she told BBC Radio Kent.
“He actually spoke to me and he said he checked out the list and thought, ‘those poor lads that gave all the pieces, they do not deserve this’.”
The memorial had been in place for over 100 years, and listed the 163 people from Chatham who died within the First world War.
Leonard spoke of the good value the memorials needed to the area people, especially for the relatives of those named on them.
“It was terrible once we discovered that they were gone,” she said.
“We just couldn’t consider it because it is not only the church, it’s the entire wider community.”
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