War Memorial
The war memorial in St Giles remembers all the dead of the city of Oxford in the First and Second World Wars, but contains no individual names. It bears the coats of arms of both City and University. A parade takes place in St Giles every Remembrance Sunday.
The postcard below shows the War Memorial when it was very new in about 1920. Oxford was much smaller then, and the present suburbs of Oxford were still separate villages. Some of them have their own First World War me
The City Council’s War Museum Committee originally planned to put a war museum on this site, and H.T. Hare produced a design for a classical-style structure with a dome surmounted by a figure of a winged Victory. St John’s College, who owned the land, would not approve the erection of a building which would block the view of St Giles’ Church, and favoured the alternative of a large granite cross.
Nine designs were submitted, and the War Memorial Committee (as it was now known) selected that of John Egerton Thorpe, but Gilbert Thomas Francis Gardner and Thomas Rayson were asked by the council to collaborate in “working out” the design and carrying out the work.
The memorial stands on an octagonal pedestal and is in the fifteenth-century style. The carving was done by Ernest Field of Stockmore Street. The overall height is 37 ft 6 in, its total cost was £1,500, and it was unveiled in 1921
See also:
- Alex Bruce, “The Oxford War Memorial:Thomas Rayson and the Chester connection”, Oxoniensia LVI (1991), 155–68.
- Oxford Journal Illustrated, 20 October 1920, p. 9 for a picture of the memorial