Walking across Hyde Park one evening I noticed this fine memorial. The inscription set me thinking.
Take a look and see if it puzzles you.
Why are the dates 1914 – 1919? With a little help from Wiki the answer is that the Treaty of Versailles, formally ending the Great War, was not signed until June 1919 although the Armistice had taken place on 11th November 1918. These 1919 memorials are quite common. Much rarer are 1914 – 1921 when the United States signed a treaty in Berlin, ending their war with Germany.
War memorials seem to be a relatively modern invention. There have been memorials to individuals but they don’t count. There are two contenders for the oldest. Sir William Draper captured the province of Manilla in the Philippines from the Spanish in 1762. We gave it back a couple of years later and that perhaps gave Sir William the idea of building a memorial to commemorate his soldiers (the 79th Regiment of Foot) who it must have seemed gave their lives for nothing. This is the sarcophagus he built in 1767 near his home in Bristol. It’s an awful picture and next time I am in the area I will pay it a visit.
There is another claimant to be the oldest war memorial: All Souls Oxford, founded by Henry VI and Henry Chichele (Archbishop of Canterbury) in 1438 to pray for the souls of soldiers killed in wars with France. If this counts as a war memorial, I submit that Battle Abbey has at least as good a claim and is a lot older.
In 1070 Pope Alexander II ordered the Normans to do penance for killing so many people during their conquest of England. In response, William the Conqueror vowed to build an abbey where the Battle of Hastings had taken place, with the high altar of its church on the supposed spot where King Harold fell in that battle on Saturday, 14 October 1066. He started building it, dedicating it to St. Martin, sometimes known as “the Apostle of the Gauls,” though William died before it was completed. Its church was finished in about 1094 and consecrated during the reign of his son William Rufus. (Wikipedia)