LYNDEBOROUGH — The town’s veterans memorials have a new temporary home, just in time for Wednesday’s Veteran’s Day celebration, but the hasty relocation has upset some residents who say they shouldn’t have been moved without an approving town vote.

The two stone monuments and a Civil War-era cannon were moved earlier last week from outside the J.A. Tarbell Library, to their new temporary home beneath the flagpole at Center Hall. Construction on a planned addition to the library began shortly after.

Bob Rogers, chairman of the library trustees, told selectmen at Wednesday’s meeting that the monuments would have been in the way of construction, but he didn’t authorize anyone to move the monuments and he isn’t sure who took the initiative.

“I was as surprised to find they’d been moved as you were,” Rogers said to selectmen. “But, I was happy to see them moved.”

Rogers said he had asked residents if it would be possible to move the heavy stone monuments and cannon, but hadn’t asked anyone to do it.

Some residents who attended the meeting, including Stephanie Roper, said the monuments and cannon shouldn’t have been moved without appropriate planning and approval.

“The cannon, specifically, has to return to its previous site because the town voted on it being there,” Roper said. “It can only be moved by another town vote.”

Relocating the memorials might have also required a town vote, Roper said. The town initially voted to place the cannon in front of Citizens Hall on March 14, 1900, before receiving it on loan from the War Department. In 1934 it was moved in front of the library by town vote, where it sat until last week. Recently it had been discovered that salt used during snow plowing was causing the cannon to rust, and selectmen had considered starting the process to move the monuments. The naval canon would have originally been stationed on a ship and supported by a wooden platform.

Now that the cannon and monuments have been moved, Roper said she would like to see them stay at Center Hall until spring while a permanent base is built for the cannon and a plan for where to place the monuments is formed. At Wednesday’s meeting selectmen said they weren’t sure who moved the monuments, but chairperson Lorraine Strube said she had an idea about who could have done it.

“We’ll look into this. It caught us by surprise,” Strube said. “The idea was, if this had not happened, we would gather people together to work on how to move these as a group. This just happened so fast.”

Town Administrator Jim Bingham said yesterday that the Select Board is still looking into the issue to identify how the monuments were moved and what would happen to them now.

“The bottom line is that the monuments were in the way, and for their safety, they had to be relocated,” Bingham said. “Communication broke down given the very rapid timeline that this construction was facing. We just didn’t have time to react.”

Rogers had previously said he expects the shell and roof of the 1,200 square foot addition to the library to be up by the end of December.

The relocation of the monuments shouldn’t have a significant impact on the town’s Veteran’s Day celebrations, Bingham said. A celebration is scheduled for 11 a.m. Wednesday at Center Hall, where the monuments are now located.