engineering

Gerrards Cross Memorial Building

Gerrards Cross Memorial Building is a engineering topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Gerrards Cross Memorial Building rather than just read about it. In short: The Gerrards Cross Memorial Building is a community centre and First World War memorial in the village of Gerrards Cross in Buckinghamshire, to north west of London, England. The building was designed by British architect Sir Edwin Lutyens, known for designing the Cenotaph in London and numerous other war memorials; it is the only instance of Lutyens designing a war memorial with a functional purpose, rather than as…

Key takeaways

Gerrards Cross Memorial Building belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Gerrards Cross Memorial Building to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Gerrards Cross Memorial Building from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Gerrards Cross Memorial Building is a community centre and First World War memorial in the village of Gerrards Cross in Buckinghamshire, to north west of London, England. The building was designed by British architect Sir Edwin Lutyens, known for designing the Cenotaph in London and numerous other war memorials; it is the only instance of Lutyens designing a war memorial with a functional purpose, rather than as a monument in its own right.

Conception In the aftermath of the First World War, thousands of war memorials were commissioned across Britain to commemorate the war dead. In Gerrards Cross, the local vicar, the Reverend John Matthew Glubb, was keen to have a "living memorial" which would be of use to the village community and its ex-service personnel, rather than simply a monument in its own right. The vicar proposed that the former vicarage stables should be converted for use as a community centre. Rather than form a war memorial committee as was the common practice, the village established a community association, whose remit was to "establish, maintain and manage a community centre which shall be a war memorial for activities promoted by the association and its constituent members in furtherance of the above objectives or any of them, the centre to be called the Gerrards Cross Centre".

Design

Architect Sir Edwin Lutyens was commissioned for the project. Although Lutyens designed over 40 war memorials in the aftermath of the First World War, Gerrards Cross was the only in which he was commissioned to design a memorial with a functional purpose. Lutyens was already a well-regarded architect for his country houses built for wealthy clients before the war, and was commissioned to design many war memorials following the success of the Cenotaph on London's Whitehall. The building is based on the 18th-century vicarage stables. Set well back from the road and partially hidden by hedges, it is a rectangular structure constructed predominantly of red brick, most of which is painted white, with a slate roof and a large portico in antis. The roof above the portico is supported by four sandstone Doric columns, also painted white, which are level with the walls of the wings; it houses a stone memorial plaque the height of the wall which lists the names of men from the village who were killed while serving in the First World War. The interior is based around a central hall with wings to the side, forming a U shape; the wings are accessed from the exterior through doors at either end of the portico. Viewed from the front, the building appears to be a single-storey structure, but at the rear the roof is shorter, revealing an attic storey above the hall. Lutyens' original proposal included a similar portico at the rear of the building to allow for a larger hall, but this was not included in the final specification. The total cost of the project was approximately £3,500 (1922) (about £172,000 in 2025), which was funded by public subscription. The building was formally opened by Charles Wynn-Carington, 1st Marquess of Lincolnshire, the Lord Lieutenant of Buckinghamshire, on 14 October 1922.

Post-war history

The plaque on the front of the building was replaced in 1947, the replacement having been sculpted by Edmund Ware. The plaque contains two columns of names separated by a sword and headed by the pre-1948 coat of arms of Buckinghamshire. In the same year, the Gerrards Cross Community Association was founded to promote the well-being of the village community and took responsibility for the memorial building. The vicarage house itself (formerly known as Berkeley Cottage and heavily modified since its original construction), just east of the memorial building—adjacent and to the rear—was purchased from the Church of England after the Second World War and converted into the Gerrards Cross Memorial Centre to serve as a memorial to the second war. To commemorate Remembrance Sunday 2015, Historic England (formerly known as English Heritage) announced that it considered Lutyens' war memorials to be a national collection. Accordingly, the Gerrards Cross Memorial Building was designated a grade II listed building, having previously been the only one of Lutyens' 44 free-standing memorials in England not to hold listed building status. Each of the memorials' descriptions on the National Heritage List for England was also updated and expanded. The adjacent Memorial Centre is a grade II listed building in its own right, having been listed in 1985. The memorial building remains in active use, and serves as the headquarters of the local branch of the Royal British Legion.

References

Bibliography Pevsner, Nikolaus; Williamson, Elizabeth; Brandwood, Geoffrey K (1994). Buckinghamshire: The Buildings of England. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press. ISBN 9780300095845. Skelton, Tim; Gliddon, Gerald (2008). Lutyens and the Great War. London: Frances Lincoln Publishers. ISBN 9780711228788.

External links Official website

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Gerrards Cross Memorial Building

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Gerrards Cross Memorial Building claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Gerrards Cross Memorial Building before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Gerrards Cross Memorial Building ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Gerrards Cross Memorial Building

In research: Gerrards Cross Memorial Building appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Gerrards Cross Memorial Building in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Gerrards Cross Memorial Building is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Buildings and structures completed in 1922, Gerrards Cross, Grade II listed buildings in Buckinghamshire, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Gerrards Cross Memorial Building outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Gerrards Cross Memorial Building in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Gerrards Cross Memorial Building means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Gerrards Cross Memorial Building out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Gerrards Cross Memorial Building in simple terms?

Why does Gerrards Cross Memorial Building matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Gerrards Cross Memorial Building?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Gerrards Cross Memorial Building.