City MP Gillian Merron has this week given her backing to the Lincoln Tank Committee's plan to put a replica tank monument on the Tritton Road roundabout.

The Tank Committee - headed by local fundraisers Joe Cooke and Frank Connell - want to commemorate Lincoln's role as the birthplace of the modern tank. In 1915 the Landship Committee, headed by Winston Churchill, contracted the William Tritton and the William Foster Company of our city, to design a tracked 'landship'. Amazingly the first prototype was completed in only a few months, with the first tanks serving on the Western Front a year later.

Currently the only recognition of Lincoln's key role in the First World War is a small plaque on the wall outside the Tritton Road Morrisons. But local historians and enthusiasts want to change this, by erecting a full scale model of William Tritton's prototype Little Willie.

Gillian Merron MP said:

"I am delighted to back the Lincoln Tank Committee's campaign to place a replica tank on the Tritton Road roundabout. It would be a fitting tribute to Lincoln's long and proud industrial heritage and would show our city as the birthplace of the tank."

"The tanks designed and produced here in Lincoln, played a key role in changing the First World War and we should all be proud of the contribution made by our city's engineering expertise."

"The chosen site is particularly appropriate,, reinforcing the link with the tank's designer William Tritton. I have given the Committee my full support and I will do anything I can to help move the project forward."

ENDS