Details
RALPH ALLEN DRIVE
656-1/0/0 Abbey Cemetery
Crimean War Memorial
GV II
War memorial obelisk. Pennant Stone, by Samuel Rogers, mason of Widcombe. 1856. Obelisk on square base, placed on top of an eared sarcophagus on a two-stage base. Wreaths to each face of the obelisk above inscriptions. On one side is a list of local men who died in the Crimea, from Major General Sir John Campbe, Bart, CB down to William Shell, seaman (`the first who fell in the war'), above a list of battles: Bomarsund, Alma, Balaclava, Inkerman, Sweaborg, Tchernaya, Sebastopol. The main inscription reads `ERECTED BY THE CITIZENS OF BATH IN HONOUR, UNDER GOD, OF THOSE HEROIC MEN, ESPECIALLY THEIR FELLOW CITIZENS AND FRIENDS HERE RECORDED, WHO LAID DOWN THEIR LIVES IN THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1854-5, SO TRIUMPHANTLY ACHIEVED FOR THE LIBERTIES OF EUROPE. `THERE IS A TIME TO DIE', Eccl. iii 2 v. On the reverse is the word `KARS' over the name of General Richard Debauffe Guyon.
HISTORY: Based on a design in Pere Lachaise cemetery, Paris, this is an unusual civic memorial (as opposed to the more common regimental ones) to the casualties of the Crimean War. Unusual too is the inclusion of the names of all ranks, officers and privates alike. The genesis of the memorial was the arrival of wounded soldiers from the war in Bath, en route from Plymouth to Chatham in March 1855, which led to great effusions of civic support for the soldiery. The monument cost £57/10/- and the lettering a further £4/12/6. It was unveiled by the Mayor on 29 May 1856, when 15-20,000 persons are thought to have been present. Guyon was a Walcot-born soldier who, having married into the Hungarian aristocracy, fought against the Austrian and Russian states on various occasions. An early and unusual civic war memorial.
SOURCE: William Hanna, `Bath and the Crimean War, 1854-1856', Bath History VIII (2000), 148 ff.
Listing NGR: ST7592063622
This List entry has been amended to add sources for War Memorials Online and the War Memorials Register. These sources were not used in the compilation of this List entry but are added here as a guide for further reading, 15 December 2016.
