There are twenty Grade I listed war memorials in England (out of over 3,000 listed war memorials) including the Arch of Remembrance in Leicester designed by Lutyens, his largest war memorial in England. I have not seen it but on Friday I visited another of his memorials, also Grade I listed.
Rather shamingly I had never more than glanced at it as I plied back and forth to Tower Hill tube station from 1976 until 1992 while working for Czarnikow in Mark Lane. Of course I looked at the facade of Ten Trinity Square as it was used in the title sequence of The Professionals. When I had dinner with Martin Shaw at The Ivy Club he professed not to remember this but he is in a state of denial about the series, taking particular offence if his hair style is mentioned. In fact he tried unsuccessfully to stop the series being repeated. Sometimes there are flights of fancy here but the last two sentences, somewhat surprisingly, are true.
Sorry, got into a digression but before getting back on track Ten Trinity Square (Grade II listed) was built as the HQ of the Port of London Authority, was then HQ for insurance company Willis and now is a Four Seasons hotel.
The anchor, above, is a 2005 memorial to the merchant seamen who lost their lives in the Falklanda War. I went to see Lutyens’ Tower Hill Memorial, a Commonwealth War Graves memorial to those who died in the Merchant Navy and fishing fleet in WW I. It was extended after WW II, the whole thing is very fine and of course the hordes of visitors going to the Tower ignore it.
It’s worth mentioning that Lutyens’ classical memorials are worth seeing from different angles.
The inscription reads:
1914 – 1918
TO THE GLORY OF GOD AND TO THE HONOUR OF TWELVE THOUSAND OF THE MERCHANT NAVY AND FISHING FLEETS WHO HAVE NO GRAVE BUT THE SEA