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Crich Stand in Derbyshire was built originally as a monument to the dead members of Derbyshire Regiment the Sherwood Foresters during World War One. Captain Fred Roberts was a member of this regiment.

When he discovered a printing press in the ruins of Ypres, Belgium in 1916, he decided to publish a satirical magazine called The Wipers Times - "Wipers" being army slang for Ypres.

Full of gallows humour, The Wipers Times was poignant, subversive and very funny. Produced literally under enemy fire and defying both authority and gas attacks, the magazine proved a huge success with the troops on the Western Front. It was, above all, a tribute to the resilience of the human spirit in the face of overwhelming adversity.

Captain Roberts survived the war but many of the contributors to the paper didn’t – Crich Stand is a monument to all of them.

Location: Crich, Derbyshire DE4 5DL
Image: Copies of Wipers Times at Derbyshire Record Office