Royal Naval Division Memorial
Lutyens’s memorial to the Royal Naval Division, an obelisk rising from a shallow bowl-like fountain inscribed with lines from Rupert Brooke, was unveiled beside the Admiralty on Horse Guards Parade in 1925, later moved to Greenwich in 1951, and finally brought back and rededicated on its original site in 2003.
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Description
The memorial (consisting of an obelisk in a shallow bowl cum fountain), was built alongside the Admiralty Building on Horse Guards Parade, London and unveiled on Gallipoli Day (25 April) 1925 by Major-General Sir Archibald Paris, the commander of the Division at the defence of Antwerp in 1914. However, with the prospect of war in 1939, it was dismantled and put into storage to allow for the construction of the adjacent Citadel as a bombproof building for the Admiralty. It remained in storage until 1951 when, rather than return it to its original location , it was re-erected at the Royal Naval College in Greenwich in 1951.
The closure of the College in 1998 provided the happy opportunity to return the memorial to its original site and a fundraising campaign was launched under the patronage of the Prince of Wales. Over £200,000 was raised which, together with support from the War Memorials Trust and the English Heritage Grant Scheme for War Memorials, was sufficient to pay for the relocation and, importantly, provide an endowment for future maintenance. The memorial was rededicated by the Prince of Wales on 13 November 2003, a date which commemorates the Division’s successful attack at Beaucourt-sur-l’Ancre in the Battle of the Somme in 1916.
The most well known member of the Division was the poet, Rupert Brooke, who died en route to Gallipoli. Part of his sonnet “The Dead” is included on the memorial’s base. (Contributor: Tim Skelton)
Bibliography
, Gliddon, G. and Skelton, T.J. (2008) Lutyens and the Great War. London: Frances Lincoln.
Butler, A., 1950. The architecture of Sir Edwin Lutyens: the Lutyens memorial series. Vol III: Town and Public Buildings: Memorials: The Metropolitan Cathedral, Liverpool, Country Life: London and Scribners: New York.
