| 90th Anniversary of the Red Cross War Memorial |
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Red Cross War Memorial - Unveiling On October 21st 2011 we celebrate the 90th anniversary of the unveiling of the Red Cross War Memorial at Soldiers Corner, Arnos Vale Cemetery.
The Memorial was unveiled on Friday, October 21st, 1921, by Emily, Duchess of Beaufort, the President of the City and County of Bristol Branch of the British Red Cross Society, and the Bishop of Bristol, in front of two or three thousand people. Bristol dignitaries were much in attendance, including Lord Mayor and Sheriff; representatives of Australian High Commission, the Gloucester Regt, the Lincolnshire Regt, South Midlands Royal Engineers, the Red Cross, the VAD, the BRI, British Legion, St John’s Ambulance, Red Maids Hospital lady visitors, US Consul, Bristol Crimea and Indian Mutiny Veterans’ Assoc., etc, etc.. Music provided by the brass band and buglers of the Glosters and the surpliced choir of Holy Nativity Church, Knowle. “The memorial is erected in the Soldiers’ Corner at Arno’s Vale Cemetery, where many of the brave warriors who died in the hospitals of the Bristol district from 1914 to 1919, sleep their long, last sleep – comrades in arms, in life, and now companions in God’s hallowed acre. Two hundred and forty of those who died that England might live – Britishers, Australians, Canadians and New Zealanders, and South Africans, are buried in the Soldiers’ Corner – and this permanent memorial to them is worthy of Bristol, and will remind future generations of the sacrifices readily made in those fateful years 1914-1918.” (Bristol Times & Mirror 22/10/21) Memorial is a loggia in Bath stone, quarried at Monks Park, with four bronze panels by Bennetts Brass Company of St James. Architect was WH Watkins; builders Cowlin & Sons. On the 90th anniversary of the Great War Memorial Arnos Vale will be holding an evening cemetery tour and public talk on the related theme of "Therapeutic Landscapes: A History of English Hospital Gardens. Find out more |
by Charles Booth
