An elderly man who remembers an illuminated list of war dead hanging in his childhood church is glad that a copy of it will finally be returned.

Replica rolls of honour commemorating member of St Barnabas in Temple Road who died in the two World Wars are set to be placed in the Epsom church in November, more than 15 years after the originals were removed.

Your Local Guardian:

The Great War roll of honour which used to hang in St Barnabas 

This month Michael Tucker, 79, who lives in Australia, visited the church where he went to church as a boy and saw the Great War memorial roll.

At the church Mr Tucker said he was told that copies of rolls of honour, bearing the names of dead soldiers from both world wars, will be kept in a memorial case there.

Mr Tucker said: "I am happy to know that. I would like to leave these shores knowing that it will be restored as it should be.’

"I feel being here today, I feel I am representing not only those who lost their lives but also the person who beautifully painted that memorial and the parishioners at the time when I was a young boy’.

"It looks like I’m the only one left who remembers these things’."

Your Local Guardian:

Michael Tucker at the font where he was once baptised

He said the church believes the originals might "fall to bits" and should be kept in an archive where they were deposited in the 1990s.

The rolls of honour had been taken to the Surrey History Centre, in Woking, under the watch of the previous vicar, Reverend Michael Preston.

Last November Mr Preston said: "I don’t think it was ever displayed. It was in a box of archive documents going right back to the 1920s."

But following public calls for the return of the rolls of honour in the new year, backed by this newspaper, Mr Tucker wrote to the Epsom Guardian saying he remembered it hanging in the church.

Your Local Guardian:

Michael Tucker outside the church in Temple Road, Epsom

In an email from Australia, he said that as a young boy his father had explained the significance of the roll of honour and he was deeply moved by it.

He said: "That had a profound effect on me whenever I looked at it, as the re-assuring angel comforts the bereaved person weeping.

"I always imagined the angel saying, ‘Weep not, for those whose names that are inscribed here, and thousands more, are now with the Lord’."

Rev Sue Bull, from the church, said they also planned to unveil a plaque, inscribed with ‘for the fallen’, at a special service in November.

The memorial case will contain copes of the rolls of honour and information on those who died.

Dedicate a tree for £20 to someone lived or served in the First World War. Call 0800 915 1914 or go to www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/mylocalpaper