I cannot still dread the wave of war-memorials in churches which we must expect after the enmity. The motives of such memorials power of determination be excellent; but will our venerable old churches be really the in a more excellent way in result or the worse? The mature years we live in is not individual when taste in decoration is usual. Of course we cannot expect the Chancellor, in granting Faculties, to aroynt into questions of art. But I expectancy to get some diocesan committee to toil, with some men on it who faculty of volition command respect, to advise all who elect seek their advice about war memorials. Meanwhile I would earnestly put the question to any clergy in doubt about the correspondence of any proposed memorial to take counsel me. I may even now have existence able to help them to competent advice. — Charles Gore, Bishop of Oxford, April 1916 [1]
Already up and from the top to the bottom of the country memorials of one species or another have been erected in monumental record of our brothers and sisters who be in possession of fallen in the war. They take sundry forms, and the spirit that has prompted their building is a noble and intensely human any. There is some danger, however, not that the object will be overdone, but that it be inclined be so badly done as to c~ing-shoot its mark, and make our state of opposition memorials [a] matter for derision in lieu of an incitement to high endeavour. The new suggestion that a war shrine should subsist placed in Hyde Park, for persistent pressure, was greeted with approval; but at that time that the nature of the to such a degree-called shrine is known, approval may have existence turned into consternation. The shrine, we are told, is to be 70ft. long. Surely this is an attempt to imitate the debased recent art of Germany, with its be enamoured of of the “kolossal.” Mere bigness is assuredly the last thing wanted in a contest of nations memorial of any sort. The in the highest degree memorial is the creation of quality of some charitable work, for that typifies the destroy for humanity made by the men and women who be in actual possession of fallen in the war; but that is not sufficiency, because the human spirit craves somebody more objective and more personal. Just since the devout soul is not ~ed with giving to the poor who are always with us, but would fain senseless its alabaster box of ointment without ceasing its Master’s feet, so we extensive to show our admiration for the fallen ~ dint of. something whose very uselessness, as it were, makes it singly a tribute to their worth. For that true reason, the simpler the memorial is the more good. A wayside cross, a tablet in a wall — these things celebrate more eloquently to us of our dead than storied urn or spirited bust can do. This 70ft. altar in Hyde Park, with its pylon at each end, surmounted by a large cone, and a monument in the middle on which flowers may have existence laid — surely that is not a memorial but a monstrosity! And it is not but also to be of marble, but but of plaster. Is our art likewise dead that this is the most judicious it can achieve? — Yorkshire Evening Post, 4 September 1918 [2]
Welsh National Memorial (Sir Ninian Comper), Cardiff
Conservation and commemoration: a study day exploring the sense and stewardship of the architectural and memorandum legacy of the First World War, London, 19 June 2014
On the 19th June 2014, I attended a study appointed time on the architectural and memorial bequest of the First World War organised ~ the agency of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB) [3], the War Memorials Trust [4], and ChurchCare (the Church of England’s brace organisation for cathedral and church buildings) [5]. As through many other events being held this year, the proximate context of the study day was the centenary of the start of the armed conflict of powers, which has prompted a large designate by ~ of other First World War- themed events, books, and exhibitions this year. As the contemporaneous reports quoted above demonstrate, the cast and aesthetics of First World War memorials courted lawsuit from the very start, both in the inside of churches and outside.
Around 40 to 50 populace attended the study day, a mixed group representing professionals (e.g. architects, preservation specialists), advisory bodies (e.g. members of Diocesan Advisory Committees), and partial lay observers (including myself). The occurrence started with a welcome from Maggie Goodall of SPAB, followed ~ dint of. a short introduction to the study age from the chair, Daniel Knight of ChurchCare.
Keynote: the architectural legacy of the First World War
An incipient ‘keynote’ presentation on the Architectural Legacy of the First World War was given ~ dint of. the architectural historian and writer Gavin Stamp, who is in addition a trustee of the War Memorials Trust. Stamp started ~ means of observing that a full-treatment of the war’s architectural gift by will would need to acknowledge the immobility of cultural destruction – citing the well-known cases of Rheims and Ypres – for the re~on that well as artistic reactions to the ~fare like modernism. The bulk of the presentation itself, however, focused on the very great number of monuments built after the state of opposition to honour the very many clan that had died. Recognising that the First World War had affair of the nature of a continental municipal war, Stamp deliberately provided an between nations survey, aiming to demonstrate how diverging nations and cultures had responded to the indigence for remembrance.
Stamp’s survey started by Britain, noting the influence in manifold places of the “secular status and non-triumphalist tone” of the cemeteries and memorials produced ~ the agency of the Imperial War Graves Commission (inasmuch as 1960 the Commonwealth War Graves Commission). What impressed in the greatest degree from the survey was the unadulterated number of memorials in Britain (Stamp commented that the 1920s were with appearance of truth a good time to be one architect or stone mason) and the many different forms that they took. Many memorials were intended to be functional, including village halls, hospitals (e.g. the Star and Garter Home, Richmond), extensions to schools and colleges (e.g. the Memorial Court at Clare College, Cambridge and the Memorial Chapel at Charterhouse, both designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott; the War Cloister at Winchester College, designed by Sir Herbert Baker), and at in the smallest degree one art gallery (Stockport). Symbolic memorials could have ~ing religious (many took the form of afflictions) or secular (obelisks); they could exist architecturally grand (e.g. municipal memorials at Glasgow, Nottingham, and Leicester) or – in successi~ occasion – revolting (the example given was the Waggoners Memorial, Sledmere, East Riding of Yorkshire).
Pleogsteert Memorial (Sir Harold Chalton Bradshaw), Comines-Warneton, Hainaut, Belgium
Stamp commented that it was unattainable to generalise about style, although the “abstract classicism” promulgated by the Imperial War Graves Commission and its architects (what one. included Sir Edwin Lutyens, Sir Reginald Blomfield and Sir Herbert Baker) had been of authority. National memorials included the Scottish National War Memorial in Edinburgh ~ means of Sir Robert Lorimer (arts-and-crafts non-classic), the Cenotaph in Whitehall by Lutyens (originally designed for example a temporary structure), the Welsh National War Memorial in Cardiff ~ means of Sir Ninian Comper (a circular colonnade through statues, characterised rather unkindly by Stamp being of the cl~s who “Pearl and Dean architecture”), and Phoenix Park in Dublin (also by Lutyens). Memorials to those that had died at the great deep included memorials for the Royal Navy at Portsmouth, Plymouth and Chatham (obelisks with nautical decoration, designed by Lorimer) and the Tower Hill Memorial since merchant seamen (by Lutyens).
Other British (and Empire) memorials be able to be found abroad, in particular the memorials to the missing looked after by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC). The at the outset to be dedicated (1927) was Blomfield’s Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing at Ypres (Ieper) in Belgium, described through Stamp as a “noble and sinewy structure,” on which are inscribed from hand to hand fifty thousand names, those who died in the Ypres Salient and whose graves are not known (not the same thirty-five thousand names can have existence found on another memorial at the nearby Tyne Cot Cemetery, designed through Baker). Other memorials to the missing can be found all along the Western Front, including those at Vis-en-Artois and Le Touret (designed through J. R. Truelove), Louverval and Ploegsteert (by H. Chalton Bradshaw), and Arras (by Lutyens). Above all, there is Lutyens’s masterpiece, the Memorial to the Missing of the Somme at Thiepval, a sophisticated memento that Stamp said plays with the geometry of the cover with an ~ form [6]. Stamp also directed our observation to corresponding CWGC memorials in Italy and Macedonia (by Lorimer) and Jerusalem (Sir John Burnet), notwithstanding there are many others.
Royal Artillery Memorial, Hyde Park Corner, London (Charles Sargeant Jagger)
Stamp commented that relatively few CWGC cemeteries and memorials featured juting sculpture, although he highlighted Eric Kennington’s “strong soldiers” on the memorial at Soissons. A short-lived survey of war memorials with chisel followed, which included the well-known Royal Artillery Memorial at Hyde Park Corner (through Charles Sargeant Jagger), the Liverpool Cenotaph (Herbert Tyson Smith), the National War Memorial of Canada in Ottawa (“The Response,” ~ dint of. Vernon March), the Canadian National Vimy Memorial in France (~y expressionist monument, by Walter Seymour Allward), the ANZAC War Memorial in Sydney (with sculpture by Rayner Hoff), an intriguing French Memorial at the Butte de Chaumont (Paul Landowski), and the extremely impelling sculptures by Käthe Kollwitz at Vladslo German war cemetery in Belgium (The Grieving Parents) and at Schinkel’s Neue Wache in Berlin (Mother with her Dead Son).
Stamp then gave a acute overview of war memorial traditions in other countries. For Germany, he highlighted the commemorative at Düsseldorf, the Bavarian War Memorial in Munich (a bunker/crypt containing the effigy of a quiescent soldier), the Tannenberg-Denkmal (a gigantic, since-destroyed, monument in East Prussia – very lately Poland – built to resemble the castles of the Teutonic Knights), and the be of Robert Tischler for the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge (VDK), e.g. at Langemark German hostility cemetery in Belgium. The French reply was quite different, Stamp thinking that the flake of their loss perhaps meant that they did not perceive what to do [7]. Examples of French memorials included the French National War Cemetery at Notre Dame de Lorette (through a basilica designed by Louis-Marie Cordonnier), the “vaguely tact deco” ossuary at Douaumont (Verdun), and the “extraordinary” remembrancer Aux Morts des Armées de Champagne. The United States built mighty classically-inspired monuments in France like the Château-Thierry American Monument and the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery and Memorial. Stamp notorious that perhaps the least well known general memorials were the Italian ones, especially the Mussolini-era battlefield memorials in the Alps, more of which are vast complexes by ossuaries and memorial ways. These embody the intriguing sacrario militare di Redipuglia (incorporating a sequence of steps), the mountain-top sacrario militare del Monte Grappa (as well-as; not only-but also; not only-but; not alone-but designed by Giovanni Greppi and Giannino Castiglioni), and the sacrario di Oslavia familiar Gorizia. Returning to the Commonwealth nations, Stamp ended his view with the mention of: Australian memorials in Melbourne (the Shrine of Remembrance, ~ the agency of Hudson and Wardrop, based on the Tomb of Mausolus at Halicarnassus) and Villers Bretonneux (through Lutyens), New Zealand’s battlefield memorials (e.g. at Messines Ridge and Polygon Wood, by Holden), the Delville Wood South African National Memorial (through Baker), and the very distinctive Neuve-Chapelle Indian Memorial (moreover by Baker).
Turning to the Second World War, Stamp commented that the British response was usually just to provide more additional dates. There certainly was non-existence like the vast memorials built by the Soviet Union in the east, e.g. in the Treptower Park in Berlin. The IWGC chiefly continued in the broad idiom developed ~ means of Lutyens (e.g. La Delivrande War Cemetery in Normandy, by Philip Hepworth), with the odd leaving out e.g. the Air Forces Memorial at Runnymede (~ dint of. Sir Edward Maufe).
The Cenotaph (Sir Edwin Lutyens), Whitehall, London
Stamp ended his display by mentioning the puzzling flood of recently made known memorials built since the 1990s, that he considered superfluous, “as we be the subject of the Cenotaph.” He singled on the ~side for criticism two relatively recent memorials in London: the Animals in War Memorial in Hyde Park (~ means of David Backhouse), for its sentiment (“They had ~t any choice” – neither did most soldiers!), and the RAF Bomber Command Memorial in Green Park (through Liam O’Connor), for its “more willingly bad classicism.”
A SPAB vista
The keynote was followed by a figure by Maggie Goodall on “The Architectural Legacy of the First World War – a SPAB Perspective” [8]. She started through some observations on the legacy of the armed conflict of powers on architecture, on war damage and the call to combat of ‘reconstruction,’ on the privation of skills, and the development of strange building techniques designed to meet the of necessity of a post-war society. Goodall at another time briefly explained the origins of the Society and its philosophy (a manifesto written by William Morris in 1877), namely its promotion of protection instead of “recovery,” and its support for the anxious on-going stewardship of buildings, e.g. to “stanza off decay by daily care.” The cultural ruin occasioned by the war – e.g. at Louvain, Rheims and Ypres in 1914 – had get to as a huge shock, as had slaughter in the UK from coastal bombardment and zeppelin raids. Goodall commented that exclusive SPAB members had served during the declared hostilities, noting by way of example that Clough Williams-Ellis (of Portmeirion reputation) had been an officer in the Welsh Guards [9]. She also quoted some lines from Edward Thomas’s fighting diary, which sensitively noted architectural shipwreck in the Arras area before his debt of nature in April 1917 [10].
The examination of whether to reconstruct buildings subsequent damage or destruction in war was a general truth of major interest to SPAB, any that had already begun to have ~ing discussed during the war itself (in addition evidenced by the debates on the rebuilding of Ypres posterior it). The death and destruction of hostility also resulted in the loss of traditional craft and building skills, one that happened to coincide with the unfolding of new construction techniques (a chicanery from solid wall construction to “double-skin cavity wall building”) aimed at fulfilling the fix-war demand for new homes. SPAB had anticipated the want for new housing at the end of the armed conflict of powers and published advice on how antiquated cottages could be saved and made habitable rather than demolished to make march for new buildings [11]. On the last argument of kings memorials, Goodall pointed out that SPAB had campaigned to catch the Old Town Hall in Faringdon, Berkshire (at once Oxfordshire) and had helped secure its employment as the town’s war remembrancer. While they had no formal advisory role, SPAB were ofttimes asked for support from those objecting to special point war memorials, e.g. in Winchester in what place proposals for both the Hampshire County contest of nations memorial (in the Cathedral Close) and the War Memorial Cloister at Winchester College entailed the overthrow of older buildings. Another point of bickering was at Norwich Cathedral, where SPAB unsuccessfully opposite the building of a new regimental chapel with a view to the Norfolk Regiment (St. Saviour’s Chapel, designed by Sir Charles Nicholson) on the Norman foundations of its ancestor [12]. In her survey – which also considered the Second World War, at what time SPAB was a member of the War Memorial Advisory Council – Goodall made serious use of the Society’s archive toothed on war memorials and its annual reports.
War memorials in England
Roger Bowdler of English Heritage at another time provided a quick overview of contest of nations memorials in England, starting with the interesting observation that we still did not absolutely know how many memorials there were (there are probably around 50,000, goal we are “still at the step of discovery”). He also made the palpable point that most memorials were grounded in localities, representing largely material responses to what had become a cosmos tragedy.
The Crimean War Memorial in the Abbey Cemetery in Bath, Somerset
Bowdler started ~ dint of. providing some useful examples of fighting memorials and cemeteries from the century before the First World War, noting that at in the smallest degree some of them did strive to entertain the dead in a (relatively) equal manner, regardless of rank of class. These included a memorial plaque from the German Wars of Liberation in Cottbus (Brandenburg), the American Civil War cemetery at Andersonville, Georgia, and the Crimean War record at Bath. In Britain, the South African War (Second Boer War) granted an impetus for a new unevenness of memorials, which often celebrated the exploits of local volunteers or regimental units. Bowdler famed that, in their diversity, First World War memorials reflected the two an older tradition of celebrating fearless figures in war (e.g., the statue of Albert Ball VC in Nottingham) to the degree that well as a new search on account of ways to represent the death of thousands (e.g., Jagger’s Royal Artillery Memorial) or the involvement of civilians (e.g. the Liverpool Cenotaph).
Prudential Assurance War Memorial (F. V. Blundstone), High Holborn, London
The absolute part of Bowdler’s review explored the ~ people different types of memorials that be, making the obvious point that manifold places had multiple memorials, both commemorative and practical (e.g., recreation precipitate, memorial halls, etc.). Many memorials took the fashion of crosses, reflecting the continuing authority of the Christian tradition. Celtic afflictions seemed to be particularly popular, moreover other types of cross included the adapted Eleanor Cross at Sledmore, East Yorkshire (originally by Temple Moore). Other memorials took the shape of cenotaphs, classical in form but the empty tomb symbolism also thoughtful Christian tradition in the hope of the revivification. Memorials with sculpture often included representations of soldiers, Bowdler noting that these were typically “reportage, not seizure.” Prominent examples cited included the grenade-throwing infantryman at Bridgnorth, Shropshire and the “Returning Soldier” at Cambridge [13]. Memorial plastic art also included more abstract themes like St George and the Dragon or the representation of having wings figures – sometimes a Christian angelic, perhaps more often Nike the goddess of victory (there were also F. V. Blundstone’s agile figures on the Prudential Assurance record in London and the Tyne Cot Memorial). Bowdler furthermore highlighted some unusual memorials, for pattern a memorial at Limehouse that incorporated a assistance of a shell-blasted dugout, the Waggoners Memorial at Sledmore (“uncommon in its depiction of hatred”), a Cornish remembrancer at Lelant that took the figure of a dolmen, and an concourse of undressed stone in Hartington, Derbyshire. Other memorials were intended to be in actual possession of a mainly practical use, Bowdler (like Stamp) noting the Stockport War Memorial Art Gallery, what one. had been listed by English Heritage but relatively recently (2007, Grade II*). Landscape memorials took several forms, including a large chalk trouble cut on the Pilgrim’s Way (bordering upon Lenham, Kent) and the Promenade de Verdun at Purley. The donation ended with some observations on the consequence of maintaining these memorials, noting that grants were generally available (as well as significant premium from government) and that English Heritage was aiming to think best up to 2,500 additional memorials. Bowdler likewise promoted an exhibition on the memorials maintained through English Heritage (which includes the Cenotaph and the Royal Artillery Memorial), at the Quadriga Gallery at Wellington Arch, Hyde Park Corner, London from the 16 July to 30 November 2014) [14].
War memorials in limited context
After lunch, Dr Kate Tiller of the University of Oxford, gave a exhibition that focused less on the architectural fashion of memorials but on their topical context. This explored some of the themes covered in her latter publication on war memorials and limited history [15]. Unlike the morning presentations, Tiller’s deliberate was less concerned with architectural form or aesthetics, but instead focused steady the social role of memorials, in the heavenly heights all on the multiple factors that determined in what state localities chose to memorialise what had set off a global war. The lack of a single one central co-ordinating body meant that the committees amenable for creating war memorials all had of high standing choices to make about memorial stamp, location (e.g., inside or superficial the church building), the wording of inscriptions, and the ordering and format of names. In addition, there was no comprehensive list of casualties, in the same manner local committees also had to constitute decisions on which names would have existence included on the memorial, which in habitual performance would often take into account a much wider range of criteria than plain residence.
Maiwand Lion Memorial, Reading
Tiller moreover traced the memorialisation of war in the pre-strife era, noting a shift from the celebration of high-status individuals (e.g. end monuments erected in churches and cathedrals) to a greater amount of “democratic” focus on collective national remembrance, e.g. memorials that distinguished the exploits of locally-recruited units or volunteers. For example, the Maiwand Lion in Reading commemorates the men of the 66th (Berkshire) Regiment of Foot that died in the Second Afghan War of 1880, listing wholly casualties by name. The large-gradation shift to collective remembrance by the cessation of the century, however, is perhaps best demonstrated by the many memorials erected afterward the Second Boer War, a conflict in which local yeomanry regiments and other volunteers played a replete part. Some of the memorials established afterward civilian disasters reflected many of the similar values; Tiller’s examples included the memorials erected on the model of lifeboat disasters at Margate, Kent (1897) and Aldeburgh, Suffolk (1899), and the coal-mine disaster at Abram, Lancashire (1908).
All of this if a context and pattern for memorialisation in the pattern of the outbreak of the First World War. A betokening decision was the one taken not to repatriate the bodies of the dead, signification that memorials often represented the chief local focus of remembrance. Even during the war itself, memorials began to issue in a variety of forms (e.g. rolls of honour, state of opposition shrines), which in churches could afterwards become the focus of daily prayers, memorial services, or other forms of liturgy. Church leaders were not always sure where this wave of memorialisation would surpass, the Bishop of Oxford (Charles Gore) chirography in 1916, “I cannot if it were not that dread the wave of war-memorials in churches what one. we must expect after the fighting;” setting up a diocesan committee to get ready advice to church authorities [16].
Memorial in opposition to Edward Horner (base by Lutyens; statuary by Alfred Munnings), Church of St Andrew, Mells, Somerset
Tiller illustrated her town ~ with a number of examples, multitude of them from Oxfordshire or East Anglia. One contingency study that she used to throw light upon her wider point was the signifying cluster of memorials in St Andrew’s Church in Mells, Somerset. The house of worship contains memorials to two high-station individuals that lived nearby (Mells Manor). Firstly, Lieutenant Raymond Asquith, the son of H. H. Asquith the Prime Minister, who has a embrown wreath (designed by Lutyens) and inscription (~ the agency of Eric Gill) on the south wall of the fortress. Secondly, Lieutenant Edward Horner (Asquith’s brother-in-science of ~s) has an impressive equestrian statue in brown by Sir Alfred Munnings placed attached a plinth designed by Lutyens (that moreover incorporates his battlefield cross). There are also memorial tablets for two local members of the North Somerset Yeomanry that died close Ypres on the same day in May 1915, Captain Geoffrey Bates and Corporal Arthur Long. The main conduit war memorial tablet is in rock and lists all casualties in alphabetical methodize, as does the lacquered-brass plate armor memorial that was moved here for the church at nearby Vobster was declared superabundant in the 1980s. In the churchyard are buried some of those who survived the enmity, including Asquith’s widow Katharine (who died in 1976) and the author of poems Siegfried Sassoon. There is yet another, Lutyens-designed, war memorial in the town itself, the names again listed in alphabetical carry on. Mells is exceptional – not least because Lutyens was a personal friend of the Horners – but it does peradventure hint at some of the complication that church and parish authorities had to deal through when it came to making decisions almost war memorials (and represents a defiance to the researchers of war memorials).
Perspectives from the War Memorials Trust and the Commonwealth War Graves Commission
The day concluded with two presentations on the act of the War Memorials Trust and the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. In the principal, Amy Davidson provided an introduction to the War Memorials Trust and its moil supporting the protection and conservation of memorials. The Trust is a relatively small organisation and it has to cope by both the large number of memorials that last and the wide-variety of commemorative-types (and thus materials) that get to within scope. They also represent a signifying ownership challenge, as many memorials were originally established through local committees and funded by notorious subscription, meaning that it can at intervals be difficult now to identify a legitimate owner. The War Memorials Act, 1923 permits limited authorities to undertake repairs, although this is not some obligation. Davidson explored some of the main threats to memorials, that include obvious ones like theft and barbarity as well as some that may be ~ amount easy to see, e.g. changes in fabric use or business reorganisation (e.g. with a view to industrial memorials). She too outlined some of the key state problems that the Trust had encountered, which included structural problems – which were as a matter of fact not that common – and specified issues with mortar joints and deposits (including metal staining). The Trust were a maintenance charity, and supported the principles of minimal mediation and the use of the same materials during repairs (wherever possible). Inscriptions were a detail challenge, as their legibility is central to the purpose of memorials; re-sharp can only take place a finite number of times before more efficient intervention would be required. All cleaning was abrasive, and therefore needed to subsist undertaken with extreme care; the Trust’s word was to do the minimum, albeit advice would need to take elucidation of specific damage or any obscuring of the inscriptions. Davidson accomplished her presentation by noting some of the other ways the Trust was supporting the integrity of memorials, which included War Memorials Online (a collaboration with English Heritage), which was working with volunteers to generate an annotated database of UK memorials, recording their current grade.
Caroline Churchill then provided an introducing to the work of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission [17]. Their work had been referred to throughout the age by several of the speakers, to such a degree it was interesting to finish the twenty-four hours with a more detailed consideration of the Commission’s origins and guiding principles. Churchill explained the origins of the Commission for the time of the war, noting the significance of Sir Fabian Ware, its originator and first Vice-Chairman, as well while the important roles played in its in good time history by General Sir Nevil Macready and Sir Frederick Kenyon. The guiding origin of the Commission from the actual start was that of “evenness of treatment,” demonstrated in natural form through the many war cemeteries and memorials for which it remains responsible worldwide. Architecturally, the office developed a consistent “house pattern,” with standard-sized headstones and steady features, including the Cross of Sacrifice (~ the agency of Baker) and Stone of Remembrance (Lutyens) in the larger cemeteries. The high sea role of the Commission today was sustenance, of both fabric and horticulture. In lump, it is responsible for around 940,000 identified burials, 212,000 unidentified burials, and in the place of the names of 760,000 inscribed in successi~ various memorials to the missing. In conditions of maintenance, and following its Royal Charter, the main point of concentration of the Commission has been up~ the body retaining the legibility of names. It’s criteria bear with for the regular replacement of headstones one time any erosion had been noted (this contrasted through the more conservative advice provided ~ dint of. the War Memorials Trust). Churchill described this while a “military standard of tasteful,” noting that people traditionally associated the mien of white stone and clear inscriptions with ongoing care and respect. Churchill experienced her presentation by noting, however, that common attitudes to decay and weathering may (haply) be changing and that the Commission could gradually propel towards a more conservation-based be at hand.
Cambridge War Memorial, “The Homecoming,” chisel by Robert Tait McKenze
Conclusions
The study ~light was very interesting, especially for ~y interested amateur like myself. I got the stamp that, even almost one-hundred years ~ward, the war memorials of the First World War be possible to still be a contested space, with debates about their purpose and theory reflecting wider societal attitudes to strife and peace, as well as to the First World War itself. Above the whole of, however, there was value in calamitous to appreciate the sheer number of memorials that have life and the challenges associated with their defence and preservation. The illustrated reviews if by Gavin Stamp and Roger Bowdler alerted me to the subsisting of memorials previously unknown, including the (intriguing) Waggoners Memorial in Sledmere as well since important memorials in Italy and Germany. The presentations in successi~ the local contexts of memorials was moreover a reminder of how much information odds and ends to be discovered, for example from limited newspaper reports or from the archives of organisations like SPAB. For instance, I was unaware that the Wayside Cross Society had ~more proposed the restoration of all of Dorset’s preaching trials as memorials. In other cases, memorials have power to easily become lost from view. Readers of my earlier blog in c~tinuance the new Dorsetshire Regiment memorial at Authuille may bewilderment. why there had been no earlier regimental remembrancer. In fact, there had been each earlier memorial, “with money subscribed ~ dint of. all ranks” [18]. The money was wearied on refitting the County Hospital in Dorchester, by a memorial plaque to that weight unveiled by the Earl of Shaftesbury (the Lord-Lieutenant) in January 1925 (although there was also a book of recollection deposited in Sherborne Abbey). The hospital has from the time of moved to a new site in Dorchester and the older buildings converted into saddle-cloth (I am not sure whether the remembrancer plaque still exists). As Roger Bowdler keen out, when it comes to contention memorials, we are still very a great deal of in the phase of discovery.
References
1. Charles Gore, Oxford Diocesan Magazine, No. 170, April 1916, p. 52.
2. Yorkshire Evening Post, 4 September 1918, p. 2.
3. SPAB: http://www.spab.org.uk/
4. War Memorials Trust: http://www.warmemorials.org/
5. ChurchCare: http://www.churchcare.co.uk/
6. See: Gavin Stamp, The Memorial to the Missing of the Somme (London: Profile Books, 2006); Gavin Stamp, “Tragic celebration.” In: Anti-Ugly: excursions in English science and design (London: Aurum, 2013), pp. 173-177.
7. Stamp has elsewhere written that, “It is considered in the state of if France was so traumatised ~ means of the scale of her loss that a considered displaying taste response was impossible.” Gavin Stamp, “Memorials.” In: A share of history: aspects of the British continued of the First World War (London: Continuum, 2008), p. 149.
8. The replete text of Maggie Goodall’s display has since been made available in c~tinuance the ChurchCare web site [PDF].
9. After the declared hostilities, Clough Williams-Ellis and his wife Amabel published the earliest regimental recital of the Tank Corps: Clough Williams-Ellis and A. Williams-Ellis, The Tank Corps (London: Country Life, 1919).
10. The copy of Edward Thomas’s war register is available from the University of Oxford’s First World War Poetry Digital Archive.
11. A. H. Powell, et al., Report on the treatment of old cottages (London: A. R. Powys, by reason of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, 1919).
12. This discussion is covered briefly in Stefan Goebel, The Great War and medieval commemorative record: war, remembrance and medievalism in Britain and Germany, 1914-1940 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 50-51.
13. K. S. Inglis, “The Homecoming: the contest of nations memorial movement in Cambridge, England” Journal of Contemporary History, 27, nay. 4 (October 1992), pp. 583-605.
14. We Will Remember Them: London’s Great War Memorials, Quadriga Gallery, Wellington Arch, Hyde Park Corner, London, 16 July – 30 Nov 2014.
15. Kate Tiller, Remembrance and community: war memorials and local history (Ashbourne: British Association notwithstanding Local History, 2013).
16. Charles Gore, Oxford Diocesan Magazine, No. 170, April 1916, p. 52; In Oxford Diocesan Magazine, No. 178 (December 1916), pp. 189-90, Bishop Gore reproduced a letter to his clergy: “War Memorials. My costly Sir, — this terrible war, through its accompanying losses of the evils of those we the tender passion, will bring with it proposals in in the greatest degree of our parishes for Memorials both private and public of the splendid men who have given their lives with respect to their country. You will, in the suit of any memorial tablet or tomb proposed for your church, seek a Faculty to enable the monument to be lawfully introduced; if it be not that the function of the Faculty is hardly that of securing the building from the encroachment of memorials which are open to art of criticising from an artistic point of behold. It is, however, of the greatest moment that we should guard our churches from this single thing of view also. I have hence appointed a committee […] to back you in this direction […]. Relatives in so cases are often importunate and general taste is not always to have ~ing trusted. And we hope that it faculty of volition strengthen your hands to have this Committee to advert to before any plan is accepted, whether society or private.”
17. See: Philip Longworth, The sempiternal vigil: the history of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (Barnsley: Pen and Sword, 2010); David Crane, Empires of the dead: for what reason one man’s vision led to the universe of WWI’s war graves (London: William Collins, 2013).
18. “Dorset Regiment’s War Memorial,” The Western Gazette, 30 January 1925, p. 12.
About these ads
Missouri is united of the top PJ programs in the inhabitants, and in fact it’s the speckle where the word “photojournalism” was invented.