Arch of Remembrance
The Arch of Remembrance is a First World War memorial designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens. It is located in Victoria Park, Leicester, in the East Midlands of England. Leicester’s industry contributed significantly to the British war effort. A temporary war memorial was erected in 1917, and a committee was formed in 1919 to propose a permanent memorial.
About Arch of Remembrance in brief
The Arch of Remembrance is a First World War memorial designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens. It is located in Victoria Park, Leicester, in the East Midlands of England. Leicester’s industry contributed significantly to the British war effort. A temporary war memorial was erected in 1917, and a committee was formed in 1919 to propose a permanent memorial. It cost £27,000, though the committee was left with a funding shortfall of £5,500 which several members of the committee made up from their own pockets. The memorial is a single Portland stone arch with four legs, 69 feet 4 1⁄4 inches tall. The legs form four arched openings, two large on the main axis, 36 feet tall, oriented north-west to south-east, and two small on the sides, 24 feet tall. At the top of the structure is a large dome, set back from the edge. The main arches are aligned so the sun shines through them at sunrise on 11 November. The inside of the arch has a decorative coffered ceiling and the legs support painted stone flags which represent each of the British armed forces and the Merchant Navy. The arch is surrounded by decorative iron railings, and complemented by the later addition of a set of gates at the University Road entrance to the park and a pair of gates and lodges at the London Road entrance. Since 2015, it has been part of a national collection of Lutyen’s war memorials. It was unveiled on 4 July 1925 by two local widows in front of a large crowd, including Lutyes.
It dominates Victoria Park and the surrounding area, and can be seen from the main southward routes out of the city. It was granted city status by King George V in 1919 in recognition of its contribution to the war effort, and the king visited several businesses in the city in the summer of that year. The city’s former Member of Parliament, Eliot Crawshay-Williams, served in the Middle East with the 1st Leicestershire Royal Horse Artillery. Amongst the most prominent designers of memorials was Sir EdwinLutyens, described by Historic England as “the leading English architect of his generation”. He became renowned for his commemorative works through his design for The Cenotaph in London, which became Britain’s national war memorial. This, along with his work for the Imperial War Graves Commission, led to commissions for war Memorials across Britain and the Empire. Later in the war, many of the town’s factories were given over to munitions production; Leicester produced the first batch of howitzer shells by the British authorities before the war was over. The local recruiting rallies aided by the war progressed, aided by a local soldier who won the Battle of Victoria Cross at Neuve Chapelle in 1915. In 1919, the king and queen visited Leicester and presented several soldiers with gallantry medals, which they called at De Montfort Hall, which was adjacent to the city.
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This page is based on the article Arch of Remembrance published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 01, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
