Busbridge War Memorial
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| Busbridge War Memorial | |
|---|---|
| United Kingdom | |
 | |
| For men from Busbridge killed in the First World War | |
| Unveiled | 23 July 1922 |
| Location | 51°10′39″N 0°36′08″W / 51.17751°N 0.60210°W St John's Church, Brighton Road, Busbridge, Surrey |
| Designed by | Sir Edwin Lutyens |
Listed Building – Grade II* | |
| Official name | Busbridge War Memorial |
| Designated | 1 February 1991 |
| Reference no. | 1044531 |
Busbridge War Memorial is a First World War memorial in the churchyard of St John's Church in the village of Busbridge (now part of the parish of Godalming), Surrey, in south-eastern England. It was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens and unveiled in 1922. It is one of several structures in the area for which Lutyens was responsible. His connection with Busbridge began in the 1880s when he partnered with Gertrude Jekyll, a local artist and gardener who lived at nearby Munstead Wood; the relationship led to many more commissions for Lutyens for country houses. Lutyens became renowned for his war memorial work after designing the Cenotaph in London, which he named after a garden seat at Munstead Wood. Busbridge is one of several war memorials he designed in connection with his pre-war work.
The memorial is one of 15 crosses Lutyens designed, mostly for small villages. It consists of a 7-metre-tall (23-foot) tapering shaft with short arms moulded to it near the top. It stands at the end of a triangular churchyard, at the junction of two roads, making it a prominent landmark. No names are inscribed on the memorial; they are instead recorded inside the church, which also has stained-glass windows to commemorate the war. The cross was unveiled by General Sir Charles Monro, the colonel of the local regiment, on 23 July 1922, in front of a large crowd. Lutyens went on to design two monuments in the same churchyard to members of the extended Jekyll family. The war memorial became a listed building in 1991 and was upgraded to Grade II* in 2015 when Historic England declared Lutyens's war memorials a national collection.
In the aftermath of the First World War (1914–1918) and its unprecedented casualties, thousands of war memorials were built across Britain. Amongst the most prominent designers of memorials was the architect Sir Edwin Lutyens, described by Historic England as "the leading English architect of his generation". Lutyens built his early reputation on designing country houses, including several in Surrey. The war had a profound effect on him and he spent much of his time from 1917 onwards on memorialising its casualties.[1][2]
Busbridge is a small village just to the south of Godalming in West Surrey, in an area that was used for extensive military camps during the war.[3] Lutyens's association with the village originated through Gertrude Jekyll, a garden designer and artist. Jekyll bought Munstead Wood in the early 1880s and began building a garden. In 1889, she commissioned Lutyens—then in the early stages of his career—to design a house on the property to complement her garden. The two formed a friendship and working partnership which led to multiple commissions over the next two decades. In 1895, Lutyens designed a tombstone for Jekyll's mother, his first venture into commemorative architecture. The monument stands in the graveyard of St John's Church in Busbridge—the same churchyard as the war memorial. Inside the church is a chancel screen, also by Lutyens.[4][5][6][7]
The war memorial in Busbridge is one of several by Lutyens that originated from his pre-war work or from the extended Jekyll family and their friends. Others include Wargrave War Memorial in Berkshire, near the Jekylls' ancestral home, and Mells War Memorial in Somerset, a village where Jekyll's sister-in-law commissioned multiple works from Lutyens.[4][5] Lutyens was chosen to design Britain's national memorial to the war, which he named The Cenotaph—a term he first heard at Munstead Wood when a friend of Jekyll's named her garden seat the "Cenotaph of Sigismunda". London's Cenotaph led to commissions for war memorials across England and in several Imperial cities.[8][9][10]
Design
Busbridge War Memorial is an instance of Lutyens's War Cross, a design he used 15 times, mostly in small villages, and each with local variations.[11] It is a lozenge-shaped tapered shaft in Portland stone, approximately 7 metres (23 feet) tall with short arms near the top of the shaft, linked to it with cyma moulding. The cross stands on a base of four uneven rectangular stone blocks which themselves stand on an undercut square plinth, at the foot of which are three shallow stone steps. Its position at the end of the triangular churchyard, on the junction of Brighton Road and Hambledon Road, makes it a prominent landmark.[1] The Pevsner Architectural Guide for Surrey describes it as "elegant" and possessing "the same over-developed sense of volumetric relations as" the Cenotaph.[12]
The largest stone at the base of the cross bears the memorial's inscription:
MCMXIV–MCMXIX; THEY COUNTED NOT THEIR LIVES DEAR UNTO THEMSELVES
The dates of the Second World War (MCMXXXIX–MCMXXXXV) were added at a later date below the first inscription.[1]
The memorial does not contain any names. The cross is one of three parts to the war commemoration in Busbridge—inside the church is a roll of honour (or book of remembrance), listing the names of the village's 42 dead, and a pair of stained-glass windows by Archibald Keightley Nicholson. The windows (one of three pairs) depict Amiens Cathedral and Scapa Flow.[12][13]
