Midland Railway War Memorial
The Midland Railway War Memorial is a First World War memorial in Derby in the East Midlands of England. It was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens and unveiled in 1921. The memorial commemorates employees of the Midland railway who died while serving in the armed forces during the First World war.
About Midland Railway War Memorial in brief
The Midland Railway War Memorial is a First World War memorial in Derby in the East Midlands of England. It was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens and unveiled in 1921. The memorial commemorates employees of the Midland railway who died while serving in the armed forces during the First World war. The Midland was one of the largest railway companies in Britain in the early 20th century, and the largest employer in Derby, where it had its headquarters. Around a third of the company’s workforce, some 23,000 men, left to fight, of whom 2,833 were killed. Today, the memorial stands in a conservation area and is a grade II* listed building. The cenotaph is one of several Midland-related war memorials in Derby. A plaque commemorating the company’s casualties from the Second Boer War is affixed to the wall on platform 1 at the nearby station. As Derby diminished in importance as a railway centre and offices closed, it was joined by three other plaques listing the names of individual casualties. In the aftermath of the war and its aftermath, thousands of memorials were built across Britain. The Imperial War Graves Commission became Britain’s national memorial, and became renowned for its work for the Imperial Graves Commission’s Cotaph in London, which became one of Britain’s most influential memorials for its war dead.
The war memorial was repaired in 2010 after several of the bronze plaques were stolen and later recovered. The CenotAPH is surmounted by a catafalque with sculpted lion heads at the corners, supporting the recumbent effigy of a soldier, covered by a coat. The company published a pamphlet, titled For King and Country, in December 1914, giving details of Midland employees who had joined the armed Forces by that date. Within a week of the United Kingdom declaring war on Germany in August, over 1,800 reservists had been called up, and hundreds more employees had volunteered; to be able to carry on its operations, the company began asking employees to obtain permission from management before “joining the colours”. In the same pamphlet the company promised to re-employ the men on their return, and to pay an allowance to their families while the men were gone. By the end of the World War I, over 7,000 Midland men had been killed; their names are listed on the war memorial. At the turn of the century, it employed over 12,000 people in Derby alone. Railways remained the town’s largest industry until the middle of the 20th Century.
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This page is based on the article Midland Railway War Memorial published in Wikipedia (as of Oct. 31, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
