Cemeteries of the Great War by Sir Edwin Lutyens

Abstract

Already in 1917, the British architect sir Edwin Lutyens was asked to make designs for warcemeteries on the continent. In the end this resulted in almost 1000 cemeteries and monuments designed by Lutyens and other architects in Belgium, Northern France and other locations in Asia. Under leadership of the director of the British Museum, the architects have chosen for a common style, with the freedom to make individual variations for each cemetery related to the site. As a result of two opposing ideas there are two main elements on each cemetery, the War Stone designed by Lutyens and the Cross of Sacrifice by Blomfield. For the soldiers which were not found huge monuments were erected with their names on walls as their only surviving memory. The smaller cemeteries were designed by young architects who were in the army during the war. There are headstones instead of crosses for each grave due to the different religious background of the soldiers. For Lutyens the concept of a cemetery was based on the idea of green cathedral, a church in the open air, surrounded by trees as columns. For this idea he took advice from the well-known landscape architect Getrude Jekyll. Because of the maintenance by de Commonwealth War Graves Commission Still the cemeteries are still in perfect state and play an important role in the remembrance of the First World War.