Wednesday 12 January 2011

Crimean War Memorial

On New Year's Day, me and the wife took my two youngest daughters up to Hamley's toy store in London, to spend some Christmas and birthday money, we went up by train,  for an extra £4 we went on the new fast train via Ebbsfleet station. It was fantastic, we were in central London in less than 15minutes,  it usually takes 40 minutes for a fast train from Gravesend.
We walked down to the Cenotaph, but it was blocked off for the New Years Day parade, but I took a few photo's of the Crimian War Memorial, which is is located on Waterloo Place, at the junction of Lower Regent Street and Pall Mall in London, about a quarter of the way from the Duke of York Column to Piccadilly Circus. I've been in the area loads of times and never noticed the memorial before and was very impressed.
Originally it was unveiled in 1861, consisting of the statues of three Guards Men, with the female allegorical figure referred to as Honour. It was cast in bronze from the cannons captured at the siege of Sebastopol. The sculptor was John Bell.
On the front, by the statues of the Guardsmen are two plaques. The uppermost states: "The Guards' Memorial was pulled down in the year of our lord 1914 and was re-erected 30 feet north in order to permit the erection of the Florence Nightingale and Sidney Herbert statues." The Lower one states: "The foundation stone of the Guards' Memorial was laid in the year of our lord 1861 by Margaret Johanna Bell."'
On the back facade of the monuments, facing the road up to Piccadilly is another plaque, a shield surrounded by foliage and mounted on guns, this reads:
"To the memory of 2152 Officers, Non-Com. Officers and Privates of the BRIGADE OF GUARDS who fell during the war with Russian in 1854-56. Erected by their Comrades."










8 comments:

  1. That 'Honour" up at the top looks like one of the first Abu Graibh photos of modern-day 'dishonour' in her pose, I mean the guy in the poncho.

    During the American Civil War 1861-65 these was some sabre-rattling in which the Russian fleets came to New York and San Francisco when Great Britain and France were thinking about intervening. That makes for an interesting might-have-been and glad-it-wasn't scenario, right when they were building this Crimean War memorial.

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  2. I remember one of my incarnations I was a member of the light brigade.

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  3. Thanks for the pics and information on the memorial. I remember seeing it last time I was in Blighty.

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  4. I would have though Beatties was more your scene. Is it still open?

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  5. I'm too young to remember Beatties, weren't they a band in the 60's

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  6. Right...this time :-)
    I have seen this..it´s pretty big,and looking up at it made me dizzy, which made me sick on the base. This may have had something to do with the beer I had drunk earlier. :-D
    I also fell off one of the big guns in front of the Imperial war Museum. Not on the same day but after the wonderfull pub just down the road.

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