Misplaced Pages

#294705

124-488: Busbridge War Memorial is a First World War memorial in the churchyard of St John's Church in the village of Busbridge (now part of the parish of Godalming ), Surrey , in south-eastern England. It was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens and unveiled in 1922. It is one of several structures in the area for which Lutyens was responsible. His connection with Busbridge began in the 1880s when he partnered with Gertrude Jekyll ,

248-450: A Lancashire company invented an automated engraving process. In Britain, voluntary subscription, rather than funding from local or central government, was considered the only correct way to pay for a war memorial, although it was disputed whether active proactive fundraising was appropriate. Raising the sums required could be quite difficult, and many committees tried various means, including moral blackmail , to exhort larger sums out of

372-559: A medievalist theme instead, looking backwards to a more secure past, while others used emerging realist and Art Deco architectural styles to communicate the themes of the war. The establishment of memorials was overseen by various national and regional bodies, reflecting diverse political landscapes. Funding sources were similarly varied, often relying on local donations to finance construction expenses. However, state authorities typically centrally managed and funded war cemeteries and memorials commemorating pivotal battles. The war encouraged

496-410: A 7-metre-tall (23-foot) tapering shaft with short arms moulded to it near the top. It stands at the end of a triangular churchyard, at the junction of two roads, making it a prominent landmark. No names are inscribed on the memorial; they are instead recorded inside the church, which also has stained-glass windows to commemorate the war. The cross was unveiled by General Sir Charles Monro , the colonel of

620-490: A Sunday evening, attracted a large crowd, among them several local veterans and senior military officers including Lieutenant Colonel Bernard Freyberg , another of Lutyens's clients. Larner was the local rector and was an army chaplain during the war. Monro held several senior positions in the army through the war and was the colonel of the Queen's Royal Regiment (West Surrey) . In that capacity, he unveiled several war memorials in

744-542: A bronze memorial plaque, inscribed with the name of the deceased alongside Britannia and a lion, and a scroll, sent to the next of kin of those had died in the service of the British Empire. Honour rolls in Canada were very popular, particularly immediately after the end of the war, although the decision on which names to include on them proved contentious: should accidental deaths, for example, be included? Where it

868-580: A distinction between utilitarian and non-utilitarian, symbolic designs; in the US, utilitarian memorials were termed "living memorials". Utilitarian memorials were intended to commemorate the dead by having a practical function and typically include projects such as libraries, small hospitals, cottages for nursing staff, parks, clock towers or bowling greens, although in Britain and Canada, large-scale urban redevelopment projects were also proposed, including rebuilding

992-499: A friend of Jekyll's named her garden seat the " Cenotaph of Sigismunda ". London's Cenotaph led to commissions for war memorials across England and in several Imperial cities. Busbridge War Memorial is an instance of Lutyens's War Cross, a design he used 15 times, mostly in small villages, and each with local variations. It is a lozenge -shaped tapered shaft in Portland stone , approximately 7 metres (23 feet) tall with short arms near

1116-523: A friendship and working partnership which led to multiple commissions over the next two decades. In 1895, Lutyens designed a tombstone for Jekyll's mother, his first venture into commemorative architecture. The monument stands in the graveyard of St John's Church in Busbridge—the same churchyard as the war memorial. Inside the church is a chancel screen , also by Lutyens. The war memorial in Busbridge

1240-405: A key part of these designs. The graves proved controversial: initially they were marked by wooden crosses but, after some argument, it was agreed to replace these with Portland stone markers; the original wooden memorials were in some cases returned to the soldier's next of kin. Each marker was identical in shape and individualised only through the inscription of the name, regiment, date of death,

1364-585: A local artist and gardener who lived at nearby Munstead Wood ; the relationship led to many more commissions for Lutyens for country houses . Lutyens became renowned for his war memorial work after designing the Cenotaph in London, which he named after a garden seat at Munstead Wood. Busbridge is one of several war memorials he designed in connection with his pre-war work. The memorial is one of 15 crosses Lutyens designed, mostly for small villages. It consists of

SECTION 10

#1732791166295

1488-447: A memorial committee. These committees might then bring in a wider cross-section of local community leaders, including Christian clergy, Jewish leaders, voluntary organisations, rifle clubs and volunteer police, although sometimes committees were more tightly controlled by local government officials. Former servicemen occasionally felt that their opinions were excluded from the formal processes, while in other cases complaints were made that

1612-1065: A memorial. It was proposed to leave the fortifications of Douaumont in ruins as a memorial to the dead of Verdun, and the issue of whether or not to replant the region with trees in the 1930s proved controversial with veterans. Some parts of the trench systems were preserved intact as memorials, however, including the Beaumont-Hamel Newfoundland Memorial and the trench system at the Canadian National Vimy Memorial . In other theatres, such as Iraq and Palestine, reconstruction took much longer and bodies remained unburied at least until 1929. Resources and funds were needed to construct most memorials, particular larger monuments or building projects; sometimes professional services could be acquired for nothing, but normally designers, workmen and suppliers had to be paid. Different countries approached this problem in various ways, depending on local culture and

1736-459: A military presentation. The British phrase, adopted by IWGC, " their name liveth for evermore ", was popularised by Rudyard Kipling , who had lost a son during the war. British lists often omitted the soldier's rank, creating an impression of equality in death. Long lists of names – up to 6,000 – incorporated into churches in England and Germany. In Australia, where

1860-811: A national response, and many towns and villages did not erect memorials at all. A new organisation, the Souvenir Français , was established in the 1880s to protect French war memorials and encourage young French people to engage in military activities; the organisation grew to have many contacts in local government by 1914. Britain and Australia had both sent forces to participate in the Second Boer War of 1899 to 1902, which spurred an increased focus on war memorials. The Boer War had involved 200,000 British volunteers alone, and attracted considerable press coverage. Numerous war memorials were erected on their return, either by local community leaders or by

1984-426: A national response. The local processes and committees could result in multiple memorials being created for the same community or event: the site of Verdun was commemorated by three different memorials, for example, while some British towns saw rival memorials created by competing groups in the community. In contrast, the construction of war cemeteries, graves and their associated memorials were typically placed under

2108-418: A religious symbol and a short text agreed by the next of kin. Public debate ensued about these graves throughout the 1920s. British officials were concerned about families erecting their own memorials on the sites and detracting from the appearance of the cemeteries; critics complained about the secular nature of the memorials, the limited options for families to individualise the graves and the excessive role of

2232-442: A result of all these processes, large numbers of memorials, more than for any other conflict, were built across the world during the inter-war period. It is estimated that France built around 176,000 war memorials, including around 36,000 in the local communes. Most of the local commune memorials were built by 1922, but those in the towns and cities typically required more protracted negotiations, and their construction stretched into

2356-573: A result, many memorial projects had to be cut back or altered due to lack of money. The final size of Douaumont had to be cut in size by a third when fund-raising slowed. Proposals to turn the planned Imperial War Museum into a grand memorial for the war dead were shelved due to lack of funds. The construction of memorials produced a lot of business in all the countries involved in the war. In Britain and Australia, stone masons provided large quantities of mass-produced design, often advertising through catalogues, while professional architects acquired

2480-498: A similar mausoleum at Mărăşeşti, explicitly likened to the use French ossuary at Verdun. Amidst some concerns about denigrating the importance of other battlefields, the CBMC focused on producing a single major memorial at Vimy. In Turkey, the entire battlefield of Gallipoli was ceded to Britain and her imperial allies in 1923, and the area was turned into an extended memorial to the war dead. There were no settlements to reconstruct, so

2604-455: A stronger role in the process of commissioning memorials. France, for example, mostly relied on local communities to organise and commission most war memorials, but the state played a comparatively larger role than in Britain and similar countries. A law was passed in 1919 establishing an official role for local government officials in the process of commissioning memorials; many towns then formed committees to take this process forward, typically at

SECTION 20

#1732791166295

2728-419: A temporary cenotaph, an empty sarcophagus monument, which would be saluted by the marching troops. The British Prime Minister David Lloyd George decided that a similar but non-denominational memorial should be built in London, despite ministerial concerns that a cenotaph was an inappropriate, Catholic form of monument, and that it might be desecrated. The victory marches went ahead; French political leaders had

2852-450: A walled area, intended to resemble an English garden; almost all were constructed around a War Stone and a Cross of Sacrifice , described in more detail below. The style varied slightly by architect and location, but typically the cemeteries followed classical influences in buildings and monuments, sometimes adapted slightly to appeal to the style of a particular Dominion. The buildings at the cemeteries were important symbolically and formed

2976-473: Is a roll of honour (or book of remembrance), listing the names of the village's 42 dead, and a pair of stained-glass windows by Archibald Keightley Nicholson . The windows (one of three pairs) depict Amiens Cathedral and Scapa Flow . Busbridge War Memorial was dedicated by the Reverend H. M. Larner and unveiled by General Sir Charles Monro, 1st Baronet at a ceremony on 23 July 1922. The unveiling, on

3100-637: Is one of several by Lutyens that originated from his pre-war work or from the extended Jekyll family and their friends. Others include Wargrave War Memorial in Berkshire, near the Jekylls' ancestral home, and Mells War Memorial in Somerset, a village where Jekyll's sister-in-law commissioned multiple works from Lutyens. Lutyens was chosen to design Britain's national memorial to the war, which he named The Cenotaph —a term he first heard at Munstead Wood when

3224-430: Is the lowest of three grades, used for over 90 per cent of listings; Grade II* is the second-highest category, reserved for "particularly important buildings of more than special interest" and contains about 5.5 per cent of listings. Busbridge's list entry describes it as a "simple yet elegant cross" and "an eloquent witness to the tragic impacts of world events on this community". Three other memorials by Lutyens stand in

3348-601: The Canadian Legion or local authorities. There was considerable discussion in the US during 1919 about the need to construct a suitably grand, national monument to commemorate the war dead, but the discussions failed to produce a consensus and no project was undertaken; monuments such as the Liberty Memorial in Kansas City, Missouri were built by local citizens. In other countries, the state played

3472-593: The First World War centenary . On the eve of World War I there were no traditions of nationally commemorating mass casualties in war. France and Germany had been relatively recently involved in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 to 1871. Germany had built a number of national war memorials commemorating their victory, usually focusing on celebrating their military leaders. In France, memorials to their losses were relatively common, but far from being

3596-459: The Fêtes de la Victoire , while pilgrimages to the sites of the conflict and the memorials there were common in the inter-war years. Much of the symbolism included in memorials was political in tone, and politics played an important part in their construction. Many memorials were embroiled in local ethnic and religious tensions, with memorials either reflecting the contribution of particular groups to

3720-576: The Last Post and Reveille , sounded by three buglers of the Grenadier Guards , and the national anthem, " God Save the King ". A study of the war's effect on Surrey described Monro's remarks at the unveilings as showing "a sensitive understanding of the architectural power of remembrance". The memorial was designated a Grade II listed building on 1 February 1991. In November 2015, as part of

3844-486: The commune level. Members of the Souvenir Français organisation played an important role in many of the resulting local committees. In other cases, governments increased their role in commissioning memorials during the inter-war period. In Romania, most memorials in the early 1920s were initially erected by local communities; in 1919 the royal family created the "Societatea Cultul Eroilor Morţi" (The Cult of

Busbridge War Memorial - Misplaced Pages Continue

3968-459: The events of Gallipoli . In the same way, Romania regarded the battles of Mărăşeşti and Mărăşti as hugely significant sites, worth of special remembrance. In the inter-war years, these battlefields were frequently described as forming "sacred" ground because of the number deaths that had occurred there. National governmental bodies and charities were rapidly formed to produce memorials for these sites. The British government, for example, set up

4092-427: The innovative deployment of aircraft, submarines and poison gas . In many theatres of operation, mobile campaigns degenerated into static trench warfare , depending on the slow attrition of the enemy over many years for victory. The battles spread across larger areas than ever before, with key engagements, such as that at Verdun , etched on the memories of the nations involved. One result of this style of warfare

4216-642: The 1920s and 1930s, with around 176,000 erected in France alone. This was a new social phenomenon and marked a major cultural shift in how nations commemorated conflicts. Interest in World War I and its memorials faded after World War II , and did not increase again until the 1980s and 1990s, which saw the renovation of many existing memorials and the opening of new sites. Visitor numbers at many memorials increased significantly, while major national and civic memorials continue to be used for annual ceremonies remembering

4340-443: The 1930s. The 1920s were particularly busy for construction of memorials in Britain, although the trend tailed off in 1930s, with the last inter-war memorial unveiled at the town of Mumbles in 1939. The commissioning of Australian war memorials similarly reduced after the mid-1920s. Over 3,500 Romanian memorials were erected. Many German memorials were built during the 1930s. Russia was unusual in building very few war memorials to

4464-437: The 1930s. While few memorials embraced a pacifist perspective, some anti-war campaigners used the memorials for rallies and meetings. Many of the political tensions of the inter-war period had diminished by the end of the 20th century, allowing some countries to commemorate the events of the war through memorials for the first time since the end of the war. The memory of the war became a major theme for scholars and museums during

4588-480: The 19th century, towards depicting ordinary soldiers, annual ceremonies surrounding the memorials were not common and no official memorial day emerged. Boer War memorials in both countries were widely felt to lack a suitable quality of design and execution, echoing contemporary concerns in the US about the statues erected to commemorate the American Civil War . The new European states that had formed in

4712-608: The 54,896 names inscribed on the Menin Gate and the 73,357 on the Thiepval Memorial. Civic memorials in Britain and France typically had names inscribed; in Britain, these were often combined with other mottos or script, in France, where the significance of the name took even greater importance, just the names were used with a simple introduction. In France the names were usually listed in alphabetical order, resembling

4836-606: The Battle Exploits Committee in 1919 to create national battlefield memorials, alongside the work of the IWGC. Initially their intent was to celebrate the more heroic aspects of the fighting, and to avoid the flavour of memorials to the fallen that were being built elsewhere; by 1921, however, the committee had entered into a partnership with IWGC and adopted the same focus on the sacrifice of the fallen soldiers. The Canadian Battlefields Memorials Commission (CBMC)

4960-667: The British Britannia, to the Gallic rooster to the Romanian vulture . Postcards of war memorials were widely produced in Britain and Italy, and ceramic models of the more famous ones, such as the Cenotaph, were sold as souvenirs. The World War I war cemeteries represented important memorials sites to the conflict and typically incorporated specific monuments commemorating the dead. Under the Treaty of Versailles , each country

5084-530: The Cenotaph. The largest stone at the base of the cross bears the memorial's inscription: MCMXIV–MCMXIX; THEY COUNTED NOT THEIR LIVES DEAR UNTO THEMSELVES The dates of the Second World War (MCMXXXIX–MCMXXXXV) were added at a later date below the first inscription. The memorial does not contain any names. The cross is one of three parts to the war commemoration in Busbridge—inside the church

Busbridge War Memorial - Misplaced Pages Continue

5208-527: The European theatre of the conflict. Many of the deaths occurred within a short period of time, or affected particular groups: half of France's casualties occurred during the first 17 months of the war, for example, while the French middle and upper classes suffered disproportionate losses. Many of those who survived were injured in the course of the fighting; some injuries, such as facial traumas , resulted in

5332-781: The Fallen Heroes Society) to oversee commemoration of the war more generally; the organisation was headed by the Patriarch of the Romanian Orthodox Church . By the 1930s official concern over the diverse range of designs led to increased central control over the process. Other memorials were commissioned by international veteran organizations, like FIDAC (Interallied Federation of War Veterans Organisations). After its foundation in 1920, FIDAC organised its first congress in Paris in 1921, where it launched

5456-474: The Fascist revolution, this process became more centralised; veteran groups were assimilated by the Fascist government in 1926, and a systematic attempt to construct suitable national and local memorials followed. In Germany, the political and economic chaos of the immediate post-war years discouraged the construction of civic war memorials and comparatively few civic memorials in their larger towns, mainly due to

5580-806: The Flemish elements of the population were increasingly forming a disproportionate percentage of the army, the language on the memorial headstone gradually became an issue, leading to calls for the creation of heldenhuldezerkjes , headstones inscribed in Flemish, rather than the usual French. In Imperial Russia, the Moscow City Fraternal Cemetery was constructed for the war dead in 1915 by the Imperial royal family and senior Moscow political leaders, who hoped that its inspiring architecture would ensure patriotism in future generations of Russians. Various different mechanisms for commissioning

5704-414: The IWGC and Australian government around £40,000. The French approach to funding memorials also relied mainly on voluntary fundraising, but featured a greater role for the state. A law passed in 1919 provided for a subsidy from central government to local authorities to assist in building memorials; the money was distributed in proportion to the number of local citizens who had died in the war. Nonetheless

5828-410: The IWGC in determining how the soldiers were buried. The construction of the French cemeteries was complicated by even more heated arguments over how the bodies of the war dead should be dealt with. During the conflict the French war dead had ended up being split between special war cemeteries, local civilian cemeteries and some had been returned to their original villages. Catholic traditionalists in

5952-462: The Somme, for example, either because their bodies had been lost, destroyed or were unrecognisable, more than one in ten of the losses in the battle. One of the key developments in memorials to the war, the cenotaph , used an empty tomb to symbolise these aspects of the war. In 1919, Britain and France planned victory marches through their respective capitals and as part of this France decided to erect

6076-460: The US, memorial halls – some of which were large, grand structures – were popular. Australia also created the idea of an Avenue of Honour, involving lines of trees, with memorial plaques, along a road. Canadians often brought back various material from Europe for their memorials, including pieces of local European churches and soil from the relevant battlefields. Individual countries also had typical national symbols that were widely incorporated, from

6200-444: The US, there was sufficient interest that a specialist magazine, Monumental News , was created to support the trade in war memorials. The deaths caused by World War I were difficult for post-war societies to cope with: their unprecedented scale challenged existing methods of grieving. Furthermore, an expectation had arisen during the war that individual soldiers would expect to be commemorated, even if they were low ranking members of

6324-518: The allied nations: France, Italy, United Kingdom, Romania, Greece, Poland, Russia and Spain. These monuments were located both outside (on the esplanade) and inside the votive tower. The rise of fascism in particular frequently encouraged greater state involvement. In Italy, between the end of the war and 1923 local groups and organisations had established their own local memorials in villages and towns. Not all villages agreed that memorials were appropriate, either for political or religious reasons. With

SECTION 50

#1732791166295

6448-489: The bulk of the specialised commissions for war memorials, making use of their professional organisations. Professional sculptors argued that their work was superior and more appropriate than that of architects, but they received far fewer commissions. British stone masons provided cheap products through catalogues. In France, funeral directors played a large part in the business of producing designs, producing catalogues of their designs for local communities to choose from. In

6572-418: The cemeteries and the decision was taken that the cemeteries would be controlled by the state, and that a uniform design would be applied to the memorials at the graves. French cemeteries were used for as memorial sites for ceremonies by injured soldiers during the war and many towns began to name streets and squares after Verdun . In Belgium, where the movement of the war and losses of territory had meant that

6696-631: The cemeteries tended to be smaller and more scattered. There was much discussion across the British empire about how the IWGC should commemorate the war dead. The construction of war cemeteries was a clear priority, but there was an ambition to produce a ground-breaking series of memorials to the fallen soldiers and the key battles along the Western front, while in the east there was an urgent political requirement to construct memorials to reinforce Britain's inter-war claims to influence and territories across

6820-488: The centre of Westminster , to form a huge war memorial complex and building a subway under the Detroit River. In contrast non-utilitarian memorials, such as monuments, remembered the dead purely through their symbolism or design. Locations could be also contentious: in France, some arguments as to whether market places, for example, were suitable locations: was it good to choose a central location, or did this cheapen

6944-435: The churchyard combined with St John's Church, which is itself Grade II* listed. First World War memorial World War I is remembered and commemorated by various war memorials , including civic memorials, larger national monuments, war cemeteries, private memorials and a range of utilitarian designs such as halls and parks, dedicated to remembering those involved in the conflict. Huge numbers of memorials were built in

7068-588: The commemorations of the centenary of the First World War, Historic England —the government body responsible for listing—recognised Lutyens's war memorials as a national collection and all of his free-standing memorials in England were listed or had their listing status reviewed and their list entries updated with new research. As part of this process, Busbridge's memorial was upgraded from Grade II to Grade II*. Listed building status provides legal protection from demolition or unsympathetic modification. Grade II

7192-526: The conflict or being rejected entirely by others. In several countries it proved difficult to produce memorials that appealed to and included the religious and political views of all of a community. The Fascist governments that came to power in Italy and Germany during the inter-war period made the construction of memorials a key part of their political programme, resulting in a number of larger memorial projects with strong national overtones being constructed in

7316-496: The conflict resulted in revolution and civil war between 1917 and 1923, and the rise to power of the Communist Bolshevik government. The German Empire had seen revolution break out at the end of the war, with vicious street fighting in the major cities, including Berlin ; some Germans felt that this experience was too quickly forgotten in the post-war years. Romania almost descended into revolution as well. There

7440-663: The construction of war memorials emerged during the inter-war period. In most of the nations involved in the conflict, the memorials erected in towns and cities were usually commissioned by local community leaders and other civic groups, with relatively little or no central state involvement. Some national organisations emerged, including the British War Memorials Committee and the Canadian War Memorials Fund, but these focused on narrow, limited projects, rather than trying to coordinate

7564-580: The control of a central state authority. The Imperial War Graves Commission (IWGC) took on this role for Britain and her empire. The Commissione nazionale per la onoranze ai caduti di guerra in Italy coordinated the military repatriation of bodies and the construction of cemeteries. The German war graves commission, the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge (VDK), was established in 1919, and took strict control over

SECTION 60

#1732791166295

7688-507: The country become increasingly apparent, with conscription becoming a major political issue. In the years after the war, veterans, the bereaved and the rest of society focused, to the point of obsession, with the problem of death. There was tremendous interest in creating war memorials that celebrated the themes of glory, heroism and loss. In part, there was a rupture or dislocation with the pre-war norms of how memorials should look and feel; communities sought to find new, radical ways to mourn

7812-503: The county, including the regiment's primary memorial in Holy Trinity Church, Guildford , as well as Banstead War Memorial and Streatham War Memorial . Monro praised the village's war dead, noting that many of them volunteered at an early stage and now lay in "honourable repose" abroad. He concluded that the monument was necessary to record, and remind the nation's youth, of the men's achievements. The ceremony concluded with

7936-403: The creation and style of German war cemeteries. The American Battle Monuments Commission oversaw US military graves in a similar fashion. In Britain and Australia, local community leaders were expected to organise local committees to create war memorials. Britain had a strong tradition of local government, and mayors, council chairmen or similar leaders would usually step forward to establish

8060-502: The creation of new forms of memorial. Lists of memorial names, reflecting the huge scale of the losses, were a common feature, while Tombs of the Unknown Soldier containing a selected, unidentified body , and empty cenotaph monuments commemorated the numerous unidentifiable corpses and those servicemen whose bodies were never found. Ceremonies were often held at the memorials, including those on Armistice Day , Anzac Day and

8184-401: The damage caused by the war and the detritus of the fighting, but post-war reconstruction meant that by the 1930s most of this damage along the Western front had been restored. In several cases, veterans felt that the battlefields should be maintained in their immediate post-war condition as memorials; the reconstruction of the town of Ypres was opposed by some who favoured keeping the ruins as

8308-827: The dead and to hold donations of flowers. They were criticised, however, as promoting Catholic ritualism. Official support for the shrines only came after a national newspaper campaign, efforts by the Lord Mayor of London and a well-publicised visit from Queen Mary to a shrine, and standardised stone shrines then began to replace the earlier, temporary versions. Across the German Empire nagelfiguren , war memorials made from iron nails embedded in wood, became popular, particularly in Austria . These took various forms, including knights, shields, eagles and crosses, as well as submarines. This practice had medieval origins, and

8432-406: The deceased and personal objects sent back from the front. In Britain and Australia, early memorials were closely linked to the need to promote military recruitment and the state had an ambivalent attitude towards the informal memorials that emerged during the conflict. In Britain, stone memorials to the war began to be erected in towns and villages from 1915 onwards; some of these were given out by

8556-439: The different nations varied considerably, but common themes emerged. The war required a mass call to arms , with a significant percentage of the population mobilised to fight, either as volunteers or through conscription . Campaigns were conducted on multiple fronts across Europe and beyond. The fighting was mechanised and conducted on an industrial scale; existing weapons, such as machine guns and artillery , were combined with

8680-575: The edges of towns. In Serbia, Niś Commonwealth Military Cemetery includes memorials to nurses from the Scottish Women's Hospitals for Foreign Service . The situation was somewhat different in Russia, however, where the Moscow City Fraternal Cemetery was used not just for the war dead of World War I, but also for the casualties of the Civil War, and then the victims of the secret police . It

8804-458: The events of World War I, mainly as a result of the devastation of the Civil War and the political views of the subsequent Bolshevik government. Civic and private memorials in response to the war took many forms, from monuments, sculpture, buildings, gardens, artistic works or special funds to support particular activities. One of the major distinctions between proposed war memorials involved

8928-555: The events of the war also began to be commissioned; governmentally: the Imperial War Museum in Britain in 1917, Australia began a War Museum in 1917; privately, the repository of wartime records in France, Germany the Kriegsbibliothek . During the conflict itself, monuments were erected near the battlefields and the temporary cemeteries being used to store the dead. It had been hoped in Britain to repatriate

9052-419: The eye [of the volute]. In the case of a concave-convex profile, a distinction is made between cyma recta and cyma reversa, with the cyma reversa, the inverted and therefore hanging cyma, being the usual form. Originally, the individual types of cymatia were linked to the corresponding individual building codes and the associated ornament systems and in this way could be clearly distinguished from one another. In

9176-458: The failure to repatriate British war dead from Europe early in the war had proved domestically controversial, and when the US joined the war in 1917 their government had promised relatives that bodies would be repatriated to the US; around 70 percent of the US war dead were sent back. Along the Western front, the cemeteries were typically concentrated in specific locations, with the bodies brought in some distances to form larger cemeteries; elsewhere,

9300-485: The forces were solely volunteers, all those who served were typically recorded on memorials, while in New Zealand, where conscription applied, only the fallen were recorded on memorials. Touching the names of the dead on memorials was common gesture of grieving in the inter-war period; sometimes mourners would also kiss the names. Visitors to the memorials on the Western front would often photograph or trace on paper

9424-632: The form of memorials. Most memorials in Australia were monumental rather than utilitarian, but practical memorials such as hospitals, schools or new roads were increasingly popular in the post war period, although some concerns were raised that these memorials might be later demolished as Australia's towns expanded. In America, utilitarian memorials were more popular, and the establishment of the National Committee on Memorial Buildings supported this trend. The American "living memorial" movement

9548-513: The government called for the bodies to be buried together in special cemeteries along the Western front, while others campaigned for them to be returned to local cemeteries. In 1919, the decision was taken to use special war cemeteries and to ban the repatriation of bodies, but by 1920 this decision had been reversed and 300,000 French bodies were repatriated to their original homes. The French war cemeteries were typically much larger than their IWGC equivalents and used concrete Catholic crosses for all

9672-484: The government that a permanent memorial might be vandalised, while the popular press criticised any suggestion of dismantling the existing structure. A new, permanent cenotaph designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens was commissioned and unveiled on Whitehall on Armistice Day 1920, effectively turning this part of London into a memorial to the war; over a million people visited the site during November that year. The memorial style became very popular and spread to other countries in

9796-413: The graves were largely left scattered in individual graves or small cemeteries, and the slopes were planted with Australian vegetation . Obelisks were particularly popular memorials at Gallipoli along the ridges, including one obelisk 100 ft high. There was uncertainty as to how to treat the wider battlefields surrounding these monuments. At the end of the war, visitors and tourists could easily see

9920-691: The graves, with the exception of the Islamic and Chinese war dead. German war cemeteries are somewhat different from French and British ones, being more austere and simple in design. They were built around lawns, without flowers or other decorations, intended to highlight acceptance of the tragedy and avoid the expensive and pretentious sentimentality that the German VDK felt Allied cemeteries invoked. German war cemeteries also included heldenhaine , heroes' groves populated with oak trees and large boulders, dolmen . Both symbolising nature; this landscaping

10044-652: The idea of raising a memorial to celebrate the allied forces. At their congress in Rome in 1925, Cointe Hill in Liège, Belgium was chosen as the site of this memorial. The construction began in 1928 and was completed in 1937. The Memorial included the Sacré-Cœur Church (Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Jesus) as a religious building and a tower as a civil memorial. The civil memorial contained numerous monuments offered by

10168-528: The largest French projects, such as the Ossuary of Douaumont, were still paid for mostly through private fund raising across France and the international community: it could take many years to raise the sums required. The Ossuary cost 15 m francs to build; at the other end of the scale, more modest urban memorials cost around 300,000 francs. Much of the inter-war period saw economic recession or stagnant growth, making fund-raising more challenging. Partially as

10292-512: The local Lord Lieutenant , acting on behalf of the county regiments; these were often situated in quiet locations to allow for peaceful reflection by visitors. Australia had honoured its volunteers by placing individual plaques inside buildings, creating outdoor memorial tablets and erecting obelisks in public places. Although the Boer War encouraged a shift away from memorials portraying heroic commanding officers, as had been popular earlier in

10416-490: The local regiment, on 23 July 1922, in front of a large crowd. Lutyens went on to design two monuments in the same churchyard to members of the extended Jekyll family. The war memorial became a listed building in 1991 and was upgraded to Grade II* in 2015 when Historic England declared Lutyens's war memorials a national collection. In the aftermath of the First World War (1914–1918) and its unprecedented casualties, thousands of war memorials were built across Britain. Amongst

10540-402: The memorial in Paris removed immediately after the parade, on the basis that it was too Germanic in appearance, but the London cenotaph proved very popular and hundreds of thousands flocked to see it. The popularity of the temporary Cenotaph resulted in it remaining open until the following year, when the decision had to be taken about what to do with the decaying structure: there was concern from

10664-406: The memorials were reinforced by the promotion of burgfrieden during the war, a medieval pact in which disparate German communities would put aside their differences during a conflict. In some cases, relatives of the deceased were encouraged to hammer memorial nails in as part of the ceremonies, while children might be encouraged to read out poems in a medieval style. At some nagelfiguren a charge

10788-420: The military. One method used to address this was the inclusion of lists of names. In part, this was a response to the practical problem of commemorating such large numbers of dead, but it carried additional symbolic importance; in some ways, the physical presence of a name acted to compensate for an absent body. The lists could vary in size from the 21 names listed in a small English village like East Ilsley , to

10912-528: The millions of dead, killed in an essentially modern conflict. In other ways, the building of memorials drew on traditional forms and ideas, drawing on existing religious and architectural themes to explore loss and grief. As the war progressed, memorials began to be created in most countries, either in civic centres, personal homes or on the battlefields themselves. Memorials took various names across Europe; amongst English-speaking countries, such memorials had previously been called fallen soldiers' monuments, but

11036-616: The more wealthy members of the community. The amount of money successfully raised varied considerably: the city of Glasgow , with a million inhabitants, raised approximately £104,000 for memorials; Leeds, with around half a million inhabitants, only £6,000. A typical memorial monument in Britain costed between £1,000 and £2,000, but some could be cheaper still; larger pieces, such as the Royal Artillery Memorial , could cost as much as £25,000. Australian communities raised funds in similar ways to their British equivalents, but

11160-474: The most prominent designers of memorials was the architect Sir Edwin Lutyens , described by Historic England as "the leading English architect of his generation". Lutyens built his early reputation on designing country houses , including several in Surrey . The war had a profound effect on him and he spent much of his time from 1917 onwards on memorialising its casualties. Busbridge is a small village just to

11284-588: The national losses that had been incurred there, and took steps to erect special memorials to them, alongside the cemeteries that held their war dead. The French regarded the battles around Verdun as symbolic of the entire war, while for the British the battle of Ypres in Belgium and the battle of the Somme in France ;– in particular Thiepval hill – had similar resonances. Australian and New Zealand forces placed special significance on

11408-499: The occasional modest local monuments. Bulgaria and Serbia constructed many war memorials after the end of the First Balkan War in 1913. The public played little role in these eastern European memorials, however, which were typically constructed by the central state authorities. The memorials to World War I were shaped by the traumatic nature of the conflict and its impact on individuals and communities. The experience of

11532-498: The process of fund-raising was much more open, and included directly canvassing for donations. Typical Australian projects cost between £100 and £1,000, with the larger memorials costing up to £5,000; bank-loans were also sometimes used. Memorials along the Western front, being larger, cost rather more than their civic equivalents; the Villers–Bretonneux Australian National Memorial , for example, cost

11656-469: The region. The Dominions also wanted to have their own national monuments as part of the programme of work. Initially twelve major memorials were planned, each of which would combine a memorial to a key battlefield, a cemetery and a monument to a specific Dominion, but the French government raised concerns over the considerable number and size of these memorials, leading to the plans being halved in scale. IWGC war cemeteries featured grass and flowers within

11780-406: The relevant names on the memorials, taking these reminders back with them to their homes. By contrast, the naming of the dead played a less significant role in Italy, where formal lists of the war dead were not established until the mid-1920s; local communities compiled their own lists, used to produce local memorial plaques, but the national lists remained inaccurate for many years. After the war,

11904-493: The role of the state. Despite the special nature of the memorials, contractual arguments and issues over costs, timings and specifications were common, from smaller works in villages through to major works, such as the Vimy Memorial. The sheer volume of work encouraged industrial innovation: carving the inscriptions into the many thousands of British memorial stones had to originally be undertaken by hand, for example, until

12028-425: The same churchyard—to Julia Jekyll (Gertrude's mother, died 1895); Francis McLaren MP (died 1917), who is commemorated on Lutyens's Spalding War Memorial ; and a joint memorial to Gertrude, her brother Sir Herbert Jekyll, and his wife Dame Agnes Jekyll (died 1932–1937); all three memorials are Grade II listed. The war memorial's list entry recognises the "significant group value" of the set of Lutyens memorials in

12152-417: The same decade saw the completion of totenburgen , fortresses of the dead, used as war cemeteries and memorials. These were in some senses an extension of the cemetery designs of the 1920s, celebrating a natural German landscape, but included extensive modernist , monumental features, intending to highlight German artistic skill. Most nations considered certain battlefields particularly important because of

12276-583: The second half of the 19th century typically had traditions of war memorials, but nothing on the scale that would later emerge from World War I. Italy built various war memorials after unification in the 1860s, but there was little agreement about who should be responsible for these within the new Italian state. Romania erected a number of heroically styled memorials after the Romanian War of Independence in 1877 and 1878, usually celebrating famous leaders associated with Romanian independence, but also including

12400-495: The shortage of funds in the inter-war German economy and political disagreements between local groups as to what to commemorate and how. Those memorials that were constructed were often built instead by local movements, representing particular factional interests. It was only after the rise of the German Nazi party to power in 1933 that substantial funding began to flow into construction programmes, controlled from Berlin. As

12524-503: The south of Godalming in West Surrey, in an area that was used for extensive military camps during the war. Lutyens's association with the village originated through Gertrude Jekyll , a garden designer and artist. Jekyll bought Munstead Wood in the early 1880s and began building a garden. In 1889, she commissioned Lutyens—then in the early stages of his career—to design a house on the property to complement her garden. The two formed

12648-550: The state as rewards to communities for meeting military recruitment targets. In Australia, the existing memorials to mark the Boer War were used initially for commemorative ceremonies intended to increase military recruitment. As casualties increased, rolls of honour listing the dead began to be displayed in Britain and honour tablets with the names of those who had enlisted were put up inside Australian buildings: Australia used these lists to apply moral pressure on those who were not yet joined up. Informal memorials began to multiply as

12772-574: The statue and hammer nails in. By the end of the war, architects in Germany were already considering how to commemorate the dead. A large, temporary memorial shrine was built in Hyde Park in August 1918, with over 100,000 visitors in its first week: it lasted over a year. The Hyde Park shrine encouraged debate in Britain about permanent war memorials in the major cities and towns. Museums to remember

12896-400: The subsequent years. Cymatium The heights of the parts of the capital are to be so regulated that three of the nine parts and a half, into which it was divided, lie below the level of the astragal on the top of the shaft. The remaining parts are for the cymatium, abacus, and channel. The projection of the cymatium beyond the abacus is not to be greater than the size of the diameter of

13020-547: The symbolism? In Britain, in a shift from 19th century practices, memorials were typically placed in busy public places. In some countries, such as France and Germany, utilitarian memorials were considered totally unsuitable; the Germans, for example, thought them unpatriotic and disrespectful to the dead. In other, particularly more Protestant countries, however, a vigorous debate raged as to whether utilitarian or symbolic memorials were more appropriate. In Britain, this debate

13144-511: The term "war memorial" became popularised by the conflict, drawing attention to the role of society as a whole in the events. Germany followed suit, terming the memorials Kriegerdenkmal , warrior monument. By contrast France and Italy termed them monuments aux morts and monumenti ai caduti : monuments to the dead, an explicit reference to the deceased. Many of these memorials were in private homes rather than in public places, as bereaved families often made domestic memorials, using photographs of

13268-511: The top of the shaft, linked to it with cyma moulding . The cross stands on a base of four uneven rectangular stone blocks which themselves stand on an undercut square plinth, at the foot of which are three shallow stone steps. Its position at the end of the triangular churchyard, on the junction of Brighton Road and Hambledon Road, makes it a prominent landmark. The Pevsner Architectural Guide for Surrey describes it as "elegant" and possessing "the same over-developed sense of volumetric relations as"

13392-635: The trend pre-dated the First World War, very few Western war memorials portrayed heroic commanding officers, as had been popular earlier in the 19th century; if soldiers were depicted, they were invariably ordinary soldiers, usually infantrymen. After the unveiling of the Cenotaph in London, it became a popular design in many other locations in Britain and Australia too. In other respects, individual countries had different preferences for styles of memorial. French communities usually chose simple monuments, located in public spaces, and deliberately avoided political or religious imagery and rhetoric. In Australia and

13516-429: The victim being shunned by wider society and banned from public events. These losses also left large numbers of widows and orphans – 1.36 million in France alone – and affected most families in some way: in Australia, every second family had lost a relative. Even those left at home had suffered extensively from stress, anxiety and grief. The war had also led to political tensions, revolution and turmoil. In Russia,

13640-402: The war dead, but this rapidly proved entirely impractical, leading to haphazard, improvised arrangements around the battlefields. By 1916 over 200 war cemeteries had been commissioned in France and Belgium, prompting debate about what longer term memorials might be appropriate at these sites. The government was concerned that unsuitable, even distasteful memorials might be erected by relatives at

13764-506: The war progressed. Local Australian groups erected small monuments, such as drinking fountains and stone pillars, to the point where the government became concerned about the expenditure on them and passed a law in 1916 to control their numbers. In Britain, some Anglican church leaders began to create street war shrines to the dead. These cheap, local memorials were mainly constructed in working class districts, often built from wood and paper, and were used for holding short services in honour of

13888-551: The war. Architecturally, most war memorials were relatively conservative in design, aiming to use established styles to produce a tragic but comforting, noble and enduring commemoration of the war dead. Classical themes were particularly common, taking the prevailing styles of the late 19th century and typically simplifying them to produce cleaner, more abstract memorials. Allegorical and symbolic features, frequently drawing on Christian imagery, were used to communicate themes of self-sacrifice, victory and death. Some memorials adopted

14012-442: The wealthier members of the community were given a disproportionate role in decision-making. In both Britain and Australia, local memorials were also supplemented by other memorials that reflected wider groups in society, such as military units or particular sports, hobbies or even animals. North America largely followed a similar process. In Canada, the early memorials to the war were typically organised by groups of former soldiers,

14136-468: Was a level of casualties unknown in previous conflicts. Approximately 2 million Germans and 1.3 million Frenchmen died during the war; 720,000 British soldiers died, 117,000 American soldiers were killed, and 61,000 Canadian, 60,000 Australian, and 18,000 New Zealand servicemen also died. On the Eastern front, 300,000 Romanians died. The war had a global impact, and at least 2,000 Chinese died in

14260-514: Was aided by widespread criticism of the war monuments to the American Civil War, which many felt to have been poorly executed. For symbolic memorials, numerous designs were possible, from simple monuments through to much more complex pieces of sculpture. Obelisks had been a popular memorial form in the 19th century and remained so in the inter-war years, including in Britain, France, Australia and Romania. One factor in this popularity

14384-507: Was considered to be particularly important for German war cemeteries. The cemeteries used slate grave markers, less individualised than British or French equivalents, and felt to better symbolise the importance of the German nation as a whole. In eastern Europe, Romania built what were termed heroes' war grave cemeteries, either in existing heroes' cemeteries, on the sites of the World War I battles, or in new cemeteries symbolically placed on

14508-794: Was finally closed by the Bolsheviks in 1925 and turned into a park; subsequently, possibly on the orders of Joseph Stalin , the Eastern Orthodox church building and the headstones were systematically destroyed until almost no trace of the cemetery remained. A final wave of war cemetery memorials were completed in the 1930s under the Fascist governments of Germany and Italy. The main Italian war cemeteries were not finished until 1938, and their positioning in some cases carried special political meaning, emphasising Italy's right to claim important, but ethnically diverse, border regions. In Germany,

14632-417: Was impractical to inscribe names in churches, usually due to the number of casualties and available space, books of names were often recorded instead. A large number of soldiers who died in the war were never found, and similarly bodies were recovered that could not be identified; once again, this required new forms of memorial. The scale of the issue was once again huge: 73,000 Allied dead were never found at

14756-614: Was made for each nail used, with the revenues donated to charities supporting soldiers, orphans and others affected by the conflict. Some relatively large memorials were constructed during the war. The largest nagelfiguren was a statue of General Hindenburg , famous for his victory over the Russians in Prussia at the battle of Tannenberg ; the 12 m tall statue was put up in Berlin , complete with scaffolding to allow participants to reach

14880-460: Was made officially responsible for maintaining the military graves inside their territories, but the relevant countries of the fallen soldiers were typically granted the freedom to design and build the military cemeteries themselves. Some countries' cemeteries would naturally be on their own soil, but in other cases, such as for Britain and the Dominions, the cemeteries could be relatively distant;

15004-480: Was similarly established in 1920 to produce war memorials for the major battlefields involving Canadian forces. A range of battlefield memorials emerged. The huge Douaumont ossuary was built to remember Verdun through a private French charity, organised by the Bishop of Verdun . The ossuary was deliberately multi-faith, however, with Catholic, Protestant, Jewish and Islamic facilities. The Romanian authorities built

15128-425: Was spurred on by the formation of various national societies to promote particular perspectives. Some felt that practical memorials failed to remember the war dead properly; others argued that these memorials helped support the survivors of the war and society as a whole. Although these arguments frequently became embroiled in local politics, there was little correlation between national political views and opinions on

15252-492: Was that obelisks were relatively cheap to build, while they also fitted well with the existing civic architecture in many towns. Memorial plaques were another popular memorial style around the world. Soldiers, either individually or in groups, were a popular sculptural feature in most countries, portrayed in various stances; typically these were allegorical, although in France the style of the soldier could also carry political meaning and reflect local political sympathies. Although

15376-693: Was turmoil in Ireland; 210,000 Irish served in the war as part of the British forces, but the Easter Rising in Dublin in 1916 led in turn to the Irish War of Independence and the later civil war . Elsewhere the war exposed simmering ethnic and religious divisions. In Canada, for example, the distinctions between the English, largely Protestant , and French speaking, predominantly Catholic , parts of

#294705