Qualla: Armed Forces Memorial

Armed Forces Memorial: Introduction

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Harry Mitchell, CC BY 4.0. The Memorial is not in London, and that is by design. It rises from the Staffordshire fields at Alrewas as an earth mound a hundred metres across - shaped, deliberately, like the burial tumuli of Bronze Age Britain, like Silbury Hill and the long barrows around Stonehenge. The architect Liam O'Connor wanted Britain's first national memorial to every serviceman and woman killed on duty since the Second World War to feel rooted in something older than any modern war. On top of the mound stands a circle of Portland stone, two cross walls, two bronze sculptures, and an obelisk at the eastern end. The structure aligns with the sun. At eleven o'clock on the eleventh day of November, the light passes through a slit in the wall and falls on the centre of the memorial floor.

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Image: Harry Mitchell | CC BY 4.0

Armed Forces Memorial: The Forgotten War Dead

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bs0u10e01, CC BY 3.0. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission stops commemorating at midnight on 31 December 1947. For more than half a century, the families of British servicemen and women killed after that cut-off had nowhere national to find their loved one's name. They had died in Palestine, Korea,...

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Image: Bs0u10e01 | CC BY 3.0

Armed Forces Memorial: Sixteen Thousand Names

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sjwells53, CC BY-SA 3.0. The walls hold 16,000 names, with space carved for an additional 15,000 yet to come. Each name has been chiselled by hand into Portland stone by the letter-cutter Richard Kindersley, grouped first by year of death and then by the force in which they served - Army, Royal Navy, Roy...

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Image: Sjwells53 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Armed Forces Memorial: The Bronze and the Living

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rhodian, Public domain. Two sculpture groups by Ian Rank-Broadley anchor the memorial. The first, the Stretcher Bearers, shows a wounded serviceman being carried by his comrades, watched by his grieving family - the family who waited at home, the cost of war borne by those who never deployed. The second...

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Image: Rhodian | Public domain

Armed Forces Memorial: Why Staffordshire

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit NMAguide, CC BY 3.0. The site was chosen with care. The National Memorial Arboretum opened in 2001 on 150 acres of former gravel pit alongside the River Tame, midway between London and Edinburgh, accessible from every corner of the United Kingdom by motorway and rail. The Armed Forces Memorial cost s...

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Image: NMAguide | CC BY 3.0

Armed Forces Memorial: The Sun at Eleven

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Gordon Griffiths, CC BY-SA 2.0. Every year on Armistice Day, families gather in the stone circle at the top of the mound. The Service of Remembrance falls silent at eleven, and if the sky is clear, a single shaft of sunlight passes through the gap in the eastern wall and crosses the carved names on the floor. T...

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Image: Gordon Griffiths | CC BY-SA 2.0