By coincidence, the presidential address for 1918 to celebrate 50 years of the Surveyors’ Institution was given on the day the First World War ended, 11 November 1918.

Monday 31st July 2017 marked the official centenary of the Battle of Passchendaele, also known as the Third Battle of Ypres, which lasted until 6th November and was fought for control of the ridges south and east of the City of Ypres.

Leopold Reginald Hargreaves, known as "Rex", was one of 66 chartered surveyors killed during the Battle of the Somme 100 years ago in 1916. What makes this story stand out from other similar stories I've researched? Rex was the son of Alice Liddell, who the character of Alice in the literary classic 'Alice in Wonderland' was based.

The British army suffered 57,470 casualties on the first day (1 July) alone while 19,240 of this number were killed or died of wounds. I have taken a look at what this battle meant for the members of the Surveyors’ Institution, as the RICS was then known.

There has been a lot in the news recently about the centenary of the Gallipoli campaign in the First World War which ran from 25 April 1915 and 9 January 1916. 12 members of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (then called the Surveyors’ Institution) died in the campaign, which aimed to secure a sea route for Britain’s Russian allies and to capture the Ottoman capital of Constantinople (modern Istanbul).

Percy Haggis was the first member of the Surveyors' Institution to be killed in World War One. He died on 10 October 1914 at Moerbeke, at 24 years old.

The First World War does not appear in the transactions of the Surveyors' Institution (as RICS was then called) until November 1914, as the previous meeting had been in May - before the shooting of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and the outbreak of hostilities.

Part of the 150th exhibition in RICS HQ is home to a former library book, relied on by an RICS member to build the artificial harbours that defined the successful Normandy Landings.

David Poole MRICS, President of Savills Valuation France, and Edouard Vitry FRICS, real estate partner at K&L Gates, are the lead surveyors in the British Normandy Memorial project.

A treasured document in our Library archive is a Christmas card sent from a German prisoner of war camp by RICS member Major John R Hodgson to the President of the Chartered Surveyors' Institution on 26 November 1943.