Monument

Cenotaph

Erection date: 11/11/1920

Inscription

{On the south face:}
MCMXIV {1914}
The glorious dead

{On the north face:}
MCMXIX {1919}

{On the east face:}
MCMXLV {1945}

{On the west face:}
MCMXXXIX {1939}

"Cenotaph" is Greek for "empty tomb".   The shape is a plain pylon with a coffin on top.  This memorial by Lutyens, for the first anniversary of the 1919 Armistice, was originally a temporary structure in plaster and wood, but it proved so popular that it was reconstructed in Portland stone as a permanent memorial. The inscription for WW2 was unveiled in 1946 by George VI. There is an exact replica in London, Canada.

See Veterans UK for lots of information.

We've read that the planes are subtly tapered and meet at a point 1,000ft in the air.

Site: Cenotaph (1 memorial)

SW1, Whitehall

Our photos were taken on 12 November 2009.

About this memorial, in his 1928 People's Album of London Statues, Osbert Sitwell writes: "we were compelled to choose a monument without any sculptured decoration on it, so atrocious would have been the detail had it been entrusted to a bad academic sculptor, so great the outcry had the commission gone to a good modern one."

Vintage Everyday reproduces some notorious photographs taken at the Cenotaph during the two minute silence on Armistice Day in 1921, 1922, 1923, and 1924. These photographs were produced by Ada Deane, the 'spirit photographer', and purported to show the spirits of the dead amongst the crowds at the ceremony, including some identifiable people, whose faces happened to have recently appeared in newspapers.  She was widely denounced as a fraud but some chose to support her, including Arthur Conan Doyle.

Comments are provided by Facebook, please ensure you are signed in here to see them

This section lists the subjects commemorated on the memorial on this page:
Cenotaph

Subjects commemorated i

World War 1

We'd always assumed that this war was known as the Great War until WW2 came a...

Read More

World War 2

Sorry, we've done no research on WW2, it's just too big a subject. But do vis...

Read More

This section lists the subjects who helped to create/erect the memorial on this page:
Cenotaph

Created by i

Sir Edwin Lutyens

Architect. Born at 16 Onslow Square. Specialised in English country houses. C...

Read More

Nearby Memorials

WW2 Arctic Convoys memorial

WW2 Arctic Convoys memorial

EN1, Silver Street

Our image shows a close-up of the logo on the memorial. We think that the bird (a swallow?) used to be flying in front of an enamelled bl...

5 subjects commemorated, 6 creators
Hackney Town Hall Cross

Hackney Town Hall Cross

E8, Mare Street, Hackney Town Hall

{On three marble slabs attached to the base of the cross:} To the honoured memory of those employees of the Metropolitan Boroughs of Hac...

3 subjects commemorated, 1 creator
Queen's Gate WW1 memorial

Queen's Gate WW1 memorial

SW7, Queen's Gate, St Augustine’s Church

Designed by William Butterfield in 1865, this church is considered one of his best works.

War dead | WW1
78 subjects commemorated
St John's Hyde Park WW1 Memorial

St John's Hyde Park WW1 Memorial

W2, Hyde Park Crescent, St John's Hyde Park

We took our photos on 25 November.

War dead | WW1
31 subjects commemorated
WW1 Memorial at St John's Waterloo

WW1 Memorial at St John's Waterloo

SE1, Waterloo Road, St John the Evangelist

Unusually this memorial commemorates two quite separate groups of WW1 dead: patients of the local temporary war hospital, and the parishi...

War dead | WW1
54 subjects commemorated, 1 creator

Previously viewed

Charles Rennie Mackintosh

Charles Rennie Mackintosh

Born 70 Parson Street, Glasgow. Architect, designer and watercolourist. He was a designer in the Arts and Crafts movement and the main exponent of Art Nouveau in the United Kingdom. Married Margare...

Person, Architecture, Art, Seriously Famous, Scotland

1 memorial