Southampton Cenotaph is a First World War memorial designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens and located in Watts Park in the southern English city of Southampton. The memorial was the first of dozens by Lutyens to be built in permanent form and it influenced his later designs, including the Cenotaph in London. It is a tapering, multi-tiered pylon which culminates in a series of diminishing layers before terminating in a sarcophagus (or cenotaph, 'empty tomb') which features a recumbent figure of a soldier. In front is an altar-like Stone of Remembrance. The cenotaph contains multiple sculptural details including a prominent cross, the town's coat of arms, and two lions. The names of the dead are inscribed on three sides. Although similar in outline, later cenotaphs by Lutyens were much more austere and featured almost no sculpture. The design uses abstract, ecumenical features and lifts the recumbent soldier high above eye level, anonymising him. The memorial was unveiled at a public ceremony on 6 November 1920. Shortly afterwards, concerns emerged that the list of names on the cenotaph was incomplete. After a newspaper campaign, more than 200 further names were identified and these were eventually added to the cenotaph. The names of most Jewish casualties were omitted, the Jewish community being unhappy that the memorial featured a Christian cross. By the beginning of the 21st century, the engravings on the memorial had deteriorated noticeably. Rather than re-cut them and damage the stonework, they were supplemented by a series of glass panels that bear all the names from the cenotaph, as well as names from the Second World War and later conflicts. The panels were unveiled in 2011. The memorial is a Grade I listed building, having been upgraded in 2015 when Lutyens's war memorials were declared a national collection.
Background In the aftermath of the First World War and its unprecedented casualties, thousands of war memorials were built across the United Kingdom. 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 before the war by designing country houses for wealthy clients and through his work on the new Indian Imperial headquarters at New Delhi. The war affected him deeply and, following it, he devoted much of his time to memorialising its casualties. His biographer, Jane Brown, records that, in the 1920s, more than half of his commissions were "for memorials and tombs, (his) clients more the dead than the living". He designed Southampton Cenotaph at around the same as his most famous memorial, The Cenotaph in London. That, along with Lutyens' work for the Imperial War Graves Commission (IWGC), led to commissions for war memorials across Britain and its empire. Being a major port town, Southampton was heavily involved in the British war effort from the outset. It became the main embarkation point for troops crossing the English Channel to France and the main receiving point for wounded personnel being evacuated back to Britain; much of Southampton Common became an assembly point. Over the course of the war, more than eight million soldiers passed through Southampton on their way to the front. As elsewhere, many men from the town quickly volunteered for military service after Britain declared war on Germany, a preponderance of them joining the Hampshire Regiment. Many others from Southampton served on merchant vessels, several of which were sunk during the course of the war, such as the RMS Alcantara (1913), an armed merchant cruiser sunk in February 1916, and HMHS Asturias, an ocean liner converted to a hospital ship, which was sunk in March 1917. The names of the casualties were routinely printed in the local press. After the Armistice of 11 November 1918, Southampton docks were still busy with military movements, starting with repatriation of prisoners of war and casualties, followed by other soldiers and matériel returning from the front lines.
Commissioning
Shortly after the signing of the Armistice in November 1918, a public meeting was held in the city of Southampton at which it was resolved to construct a memorial to honour the city's war dead. A committee, headed by the Lord Mayor of Southampton, Sidney Kimber, was elected and discussions began as to what form such a memorial should take. The committee decided that their preferred option would be to construct a single, high-quality memorial in a good location within Southampton and began to consider architects and locations, with a proposed budget of £10,000. Alfred Gutteridge, an architect on one of the sub-committees, knew and recommended Lutyens, who travelled to Southampton to meet Kimber, Gutteridge, and other members of the committee in January 1919. Lutyens argued successfully against the committee's initial proposed location on Asylum Green in favour of Watts Park. His initial design featured a Stone of Remembrance (an altar-like monolith used in most IWGC cemeteries and several of Lutyens' memorials in Britain) with a substantial archway on either side, each archway supporting a recumbent figure of a soldier on a sarcophagus. This was rejected due to the likely cost and instead Lutyens suggested a single empty sarcophagus or cenotaph, supported by a plinth, on top of a pillar (pylon) with pine cones mounted on urns standing on each side. This was agreed to at a public meeting in September 1919 and detailed work on the project began. The London firm of Holloway Brothers was selected as the contractor for the memorial; the project was completed on time in 1920 at a total cost of £9,845.
Design and symbolism
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