A MEMORIAL to the employees of Orb Electrical Steels lost in both world wars was unveiled at its new site yesterday.

The firm sold off some of its land for housing last year which meant its war memorial had to be relocated brick by brick to near the new office block.

Around 50 people gathered at the new spot for a rededication ceremony yesterday including current employees and the families of those commemorated by the plaques.

This included Richard Fellows, 39, who has worked at the firm for 24 years.

He is the fourth generation of his family to work at Orb Electrical Steels and only recently found out that his great uncle Joseph Thomas Fellows was commemorated on the memorial’s plaque.

Mr Fellows’ uncle died 18 days before the Armistice and is buried in France.

The Reverend Edward Mathias-Jones of St. Stephen's Church provided a reading and led prayers at the ceremony.

Standards were raised by the Newport branches of the Merchant Navy Association, the Royal Welsh Regiment and the South Wales Borderers.

Wreaths were laid and the Last Post was sounded.

Orb Electrical Steels was set up in 1898 on the site of a former pig farm where it employed more than 3,000 people.

Many of its employees served in the forces during both world wars and in 1924 the works commemorated 121 of those from the First World War with a plaque which was mounted on a specially built memorial within the works' grounds. After the Second World War a further plaque was added.

Since then, plaques commemorating those from the 1914-18 conflict from the Lysaght's factory in Wolverhampton and those from Newport-based Stewarts and Lloyds from 1939-45, were placed at the works too.