Tower Hill Memorial
The Tower Hill Memorial is a pair of Commonwealth War Graves Commission memorials in Trinity Square, on Tower Hill in London, England. The memorials commemorate civilian merchant sailors and fishermen who were killed as a result of enemy action and have no known grave. The first memorial was commissioned in light of the heavy losses sustained by merchant shipping in the First World War. The second, the Merchant Seamen’s Memorial, was designed by Sir Edward Maufe and unveiled in 1955. A third memorial, commemorating merchant sailors killed in the 1982 Falklands War, was added to the site in 2005.
About Tower Hill Memorial in brief
The Tower Hill Memorial is a pair of Commonwealth War Graves Commission memorials in Trinity Square, on Tower Hill in London, England. The memorials commemorate civilian merchant sailors and fishermen who were killed as a result of enemy action and have no known grave. The first memorial was commissioned in light of the heavy losses sustained by merchant shipping in the First World War. The second, the Merchant Seamen’s Memorial, was designed by Sir Edward Maufe and unveiled in 1955. A third memorial, commemorating merchant sailors killed in the 1982 Falklands War, was added to the site in 2005. The Mercantile Marine Memorial is grade I and part of a national collection of Lutyens’ war memorials, and Maufe’s Merchant Seaman’s Memorial is listed at grade II*. The Falkland’s War memorial is not listed, but the memorials are both listed on the London List of Registered Historic Buildings and Memorials, with the exception of the Falklands Memorial, which is listed as a Grade II listed building. The Tower Hill memorials were designed by the Imperial War Graves commission, which assumed responsibility for commemorating all casualties from the British Empire in 1917. More than 17,000 lives were lost and some 3,300 British and Empire-registered commercial vessels sunk in the first war. By the end of the war, more than 3,000 British and empire-registered merchant ships had been sunk by the German Navy from the outset of war. The commission was established in 1917, and one of its first principal architects was Sir Edwin Lutyen, an English architect who made his reputation building country houses and later designed much of New Delhi.
In 1921 the commission’s charter defined its scope as those who died on land and those who were engaged in the war effort of the Crown; in 1921 the commissioners resolved that this extended to the Merchant shipping and other civilian organisations who were involved in supporting the British war effort. The memorial was unveiled by Queen Mary on 12 December 1928 at a ceremony broadcast live on the radio, her first use of the medium, and is a vaulted corridor reminiscent of a Doric temple. The walls are clad with bronze panels which bear the names of the missing. At regular intervals between the panels are relief sculptures representing the seven seas, which stand at the top of the steps. The new memorial is accessed by steps behind the original memorial, the walls of which were again clad in bronze panels with the name of those named on it, and a sunken garden, which stands on the other side of the memorial. In November 1955, Queen Elizabeth II unveiled a second memorial on the same site, intended to complement the first. This memorial is grade II* and is part of the IWGC’s collection of memorials to the First and Second World Wars, and was unveiled at the same time as the second memorial. The third memorial was added in 2005 and is grade III*. It commemorates merchant sailors who died in the Falkland Islands War, which began in 1982.
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