October 21, 2013 1.26 pm This story is over 125 months old

Lincoln Tank Memorial receives £10k donation

Sizeable donation: An international gaming company has donated a large sum of money to a local tank memorial group.
A plan of where the Lincoln Tank memorial will be positioned, on the Tritton Road roundabout.

A group aiming to erect a tank memorial on a roundabout in Lincoln has received a generous donation from an international gaming company.

The Lincoln Tank Memorial Group received a £10,000 donation from World of Tanks, an online strategy game.

The game has over 70 million registered players internationally, and is in the Guinness Book of Records for having the most online users playing simultaneously in one game server.

Additionally, Al King, World of Tanks Global Brand Director, is from Lincolnshire and visits Lincoln regularly.

The memorial group plan to build life size replica of a Mark I tank on the Tritton Road roundabout, near to where the real machine was first built by Williamm Foster & Co. Ltd in 1916.

The memorial will celebrate Lincoln’s engineering achievements and its contribution to the war effort during the World Wars.

It is hoped that the memorial will be unveiled next year, coinciding with national commemorations of the beginning of the First World War.

The group needed almost £30,000 in funding in order to build the memorial.

An almost finalised design. Position on the roundabout may vary slightly. Photo: Lincoln Tank Memorial Group

An almost finalised design. Position on the roundabout may vary slightly. Photo: Lincoln Tank Memorial Group

Chairman of the group, Joe Cooke, said: “This is a major boost to our fundraising efforts and brings our £30,000 final target much closer, so we are very grateful to World of Tanks.

“It is pleasing to see an international company show interest in the Memorial, some local companies have already donated but it would be nice if more local companies became involved.

“The ‘Tank Roundabout’ will become a well known local landmark and will educate both locals and visitors to Lincoln’s past.”

Al King added: “The memorial is a fitting tribute to the engineering heritage of my home city as well as commemorating the very important work Foster & Co. Ltd of Lincoln did, in designing and producing the first battle tank.”

The company have helped fundraise for a number of projects around the country, including sponsoring the creation of an education centre at Bovington Tank Museum and a donation towards the exhibition and conservation of a Dornier 17 aircraft.