Monuments & Ruins

Not every statue in London. The ones worth crossing the road for: Roman wall, medieval ruins, and the monuments that earn a detour.

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The Guards Memorial

Five bronze guardsmen standing at ease against a Portland stone cenotaph, facing the parade ground they drilled on.

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Thirty-eight and a half feet of Portland stone with bronze on it, set on the edge of Horse Guards Parade and facing it. The centre is a broad, squat obelisk inscribed on all four sides and capped by an incised string-course of five lines.

In front of it, on a podium above a three-stepped plinth, five bronze soldiers stand at ease against a stone cenotaph, one for each of the Guards regiments, each over life size at seven feet three. Their regimental badges are carved in relief underneath. Bronze panels on either side of the cenotaph show the equipment particular to each regiment, and on the back, facing St James's Park, an eighteen-pounder field gun is being loaded.

It carries no names at all. The inscription on the side facing the parade ground names the ranks instead - officers, warrant officers, non-commissioned officers and guardsmen - and then the other corps who served with the Guards Division in France and Belgium between 1915 and 1918 and fell with them. A second inscription was added below the figures for the Household Division's dead of the Second World War and of every year since 1918, which keeps the memorial open rather than closing it on a date.

Where
Horse Guards Road, St James's Park, SW1A 2BJ
Nearest station
Charing Cross · 6 min walk

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