Rolvenden War Memorial
The Rolvenden war memorial, commissioned through a locally chaired committee led by Lutyens’s client Harold Tennant and built by Wallis of Maidstone, is an unusually uncharacteristic Lutyens design whose authorship is nevertheless fully documented, and was unveiled by the Archbishop of Canterbury on 8 November 1922 after disputes over its siting.
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Description
At first glance the Rolvenden war memorial does not seem to show the hand of Lutyens and is unlike any of the others that he designed. Yet the authorship is clear, being fully documented in the minutes of the village’s war memorial committee.
In a familiar pattern to what was happening elsewhere, a group of local residents met shortly after the armistice and selected as chairman, a Lutyens client (Harold “Jack” Tennant, for whom the architect had designed the nearby Great Maytham).
The Committee’s archives chronicle a growing frustration in contacting Lutyens (who was spending a lot of time in India) and as well as dealing with local opposition to the committee’s preferred site, adjacent to the Church – at one time a wooden mock-up was erected only for it to be moved to another site overnight!
However the Committee pressed ahead with their original intention and, after a tender, awarded the building contract to Messrs Wallis of Maidstone for £230.
The memorial was unveiled on 8 November 1922 by the Archbishop of Canterbury. (Contributor: Tim Skelton)
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