Arch of Remembrance
The Arch of Remembrance is a First World War memorial designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens and 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. The committee resolved to appoint Lutyens as architect and to site the memorial in Victoria Park. Lutyens's first proposal was accepted by the committee but was scaled back and eventually cancelled due to a shortage of funds. The committee then asked Lutyens to design a memorial arch, which he presented to a public meeting in 1923.
The memorial is a single Portland stone arch with four legs, tall. The legs form four arched openings, two large on the main axis, tall, oriented north-west to south-east, and two small on the sides, 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—the war memorial is at the intersection of the paths leading from the two entrances.
With a large budget devoted entirely to the structure, the result is one of Lutyens's largest and most imposing war memorials. It dominates Victoria Park and the surrounding area, and can be seen from the main southward routes out of the city. The memorial was unveiled on 4 July 1925 by two local widows in front of a large crowd, including Lutyens. 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 committee was sharply criticised in the local press for their handling of the campaign. The arch is a Grade I listed building and since 2015, has been part of a national collection of Lutyens's war memorials.
Background
In the aftermath of the First World War and its unprecedented casualties, thousands of war memorials were built across Britain. Amongst the most prominent designers of memorials was Sir Edwin Lutyens, described by Historic England as "the leading English architect of his generation". Lutyens established his reputation designing country houses for wealthy clients, but the war had a profound effect on him; following it, he devoted much of his time to memorialising its casualties. 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.Victoria Park is a area of open land to the south-east of Leicester city centre. Formerly a racetrack, it was laid out as a public park in the late 19th century. At the beginning of the First World War, five part-time Territorial Force units were based in Leicester, along with elements of the regular Leicestershire Regiment. The special reserve battalion of the Leicestershire Regiment was sent to man coastal defences near Hull, while all five territorial units were sent to the front. Among them was the city's former Member of Parliament, Eliot Crawshay-Williams, who served in the Middle East with the 1st Leicestershire Royal Horse Artillery. Recruitment to the army was lower in Leicester than in other English industrial towns, partly because of low unemployment in the area—the town's major industries were textile and footwear manufacturing, both of which were necessary for the war effort. 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 a British company which was not making ammunition before the war. The local authorities held recruiting rallies as the war progressed, aided by William Buckingham, a local soldier who won the Victoria Cross at the Battle of Neuve Chapelle in 1915.
Leicester was granted city status by King George V in 1919, in recognition of its industries' contribution to the British war effort. The king and Queen Mary visited Leicester that summer, during which they called at several businesses in the city. In De Montfort Hall, the king presented gallantry medals to several servicemen who had yet to receive them, and the lord mayor was knighted, after which the king was honoured with a march past by local soldiers, and demobilised veterans in the adjacent Victoria Park. As well as members of the public, the parade was viewed by thousands of disabled veterans, Voluntary Aid Detachment nurses, and war widows and orphans. Such was the size of the force on parade, it took 45 minutes to proceed past the royal pavilion.
Commissioning
A temporary war memorial was placed outside Leicester Town Hall in 1917. A public meeting was held on 14 May 1919, which led to the creation of a War Memorial Committee of 23 members to propose a suitable permanent memorial. The committee was chaired by Henry Manners, 8th Duke of Rutland, with Sir Jonathan North as vice-chair. Two sub-committees were established, one to look after finance and the other to supervise the design. The Duke of Rutland suggested siting the permanent memorial outside the town hall but this was rejected unanimously by the city council and the committee examined potential sites at Leicester Castle and Victoria Park.A suggestion from a member of the public was examined by the design sub-committee, but in October 1919 the full committee resolved to appoint Lutyens as architect and to build the memorial in Victoria Park, which had been in the ownership of the city council since the 1860s and was laid out as a public park in 1883. Lutyens visited on 20 October 1919 and was accompanied by the duke and other committee members on an inspection of the chosen site. The original plan involved crossing avenues of lime trees to create a tree cathedral, with a cenotaph at the western end, and a Stone of Remembrance at the crossing, within a circular walled enclosure, which would be inscribed with the names of the dead. The paths along the plan of the cathedral would be paved to accentuate the purpose of the structure. This proposal was accepted, and a model was made and displayed in the city museum. By March 1922, the project had been scaled back due to a shortage of funds and lack of public enthusiasm for the project—the costs were estimated at £23,000, of which only around £4,300 had been raised. At a public meeting on 29 March, the committee agreed to abandon the scheme and that "a memorial worthy of the city be erected on the ground near the main entrance gates".
Two days later, the committee asked Lutyens to design a memorial arch. Lutyens advised that such an arch would cost in the region of £25,000; he suggested they consider alternatives, such as an obelisk but the committee decided to proceed with the arch despite the cost. They presented the new design to another public meeting in May 1923. Lutyens told the meeting that the arch represented the city's triumphal spirit, and he announced the name "Arch of Remembrance". The name was chosen to avoid the impression that the memorial would be a triumphal arch, something the committee felt was incompatible with the mood of mourning for the dead.
The new proposal was approved, and construction started on the revised memorial in 1923, and work was completed by 1925. The structure was begun by Nine Elms Stone and Masonry Works, and completed by Holloway Brothers. Due to a continuing shortfall of funding, the War Memorial Committee took out a bank loan to pay for the works to be completed. Five committee members served as guarantors.
Design
The memorial, in Portland stone, is a square-plan arch with four legs which dominates the surrounding level ground. It is tall, with large arched openings on the main axis, and smaller, lower arches on the north-east and south-west sides. The widths, heights and depths of the arches are in simple 2:4:1 proportions: the larger arches are wide, tall and deep; and the smaller arches are wide, tall and deep. Stone wreaths are carved in relief on the legs at the front and rear of the largest arch; inside these are carved the dates of the First World War: MCM XIV on the left side, and MCM XIX on the right. The structure is topped with a dome, stepped back and concave at the front and rear. The city's coat of arms is carved in relief on the rear, surrounded by large swags.The larger arches on the main axis form a coffered, barrel vault ceiling, crossed by the lower arches to either side. The main axis is aligned so the sun would have been at its centre at sunrise on Armistice Day, 11 November. Four painted stone flags are set inside the archway, raised on corbels on the inside of the legs: the Union Flag and the flag of the Royal Navy at the front, and the flags of the Merchant Navy, and Royal Air Force at the rear. Painted stone flags are a recurring feature in Lutyens's war memorial designs; he first proposed them for the Cenotaph, where they were rejected in favour of fabric, though they feature on several of his other designs besides Leicester.
Above the front arch is the inscription GLORY TO GOD IN THE HIGHEST AND ON EARTH PEACE and on the opposite side, ALL THEY HOPED FOR, ALL THEY HAD, THEY GAVE TO SAVE MANKIND – THEMSELVES THEY SCORNED TO SAVE from the hymn "O Valiant Hearts". Inscriptions lower down, facing into the park, were added later to display the dates of the Second World War: MCM XXXIX and MCM XLV. The side arches also have inscriptions. The north-east arch reads REMEMBER IN GRATITUDE TWELVE THOUSAND MEN OF THIS CITY AND COUNTY WHO FOUGHT AND DIED FOR FREEDOM. REMEMBER ALL WHO SERVED AND STROVE AND THOSE WHO PATIENTLY ENDURED; the right arch contains an excerpt from William Blake's poem "And did those feet in ancient time": I WILL NOT CEASE FROM MENTAL FIGHT NOR SHALL MY SWORD SLEEP IN MY HAND TILL WE HAVE BUILT JERUSALEM IN ENGLAND'S GREEN AND PLEASANT LAND.
The memorial is encircled by iron railings, which are pierced by four pairs of stone piers supporting gates opposite each arch. The piers are decorated with meanders and swags and topped by stone urns, similar to the one on Lutyens's Royal Berkshire Regiment War Memorial in Reading.
Arches are a relatively uncommon form of memorial, particularly for the First World War. Leicester's is one of three by Lutyens and the only one in Britain, the other two being the Thiepval Memorial on the Somme in France and the India Gate in New Delhi. The India Gate in particular bears a close resemblance to the Arch of Remembrance, though it is nearly twice its height; Thiepval is a much more complex structure, using multiple interlocking arches to form one, much larger, arch. Lutyens proposed an arch with a dome similar to Leicester's for an IWGC memorial at Saint-Quentin in France in 1924, though this was later abandoned in favour of the Thiepval Memorial. The three arches that were built and the abandoned proposal all share a strong visual resemblance.