Qualla: Spalding War Memorial

Spalding War Memorial: Introduction

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Richard Croft, CC BY-SA 2.0. Barbara McLaren was thirty years old when she lost her husband. Francis McLaren had been the Member of Parliament for the Spalding Division of Lincolnshire and a Royal Flying Corps officer, killed in 1917 in a flying accident near RAF Montrose - not shot down, not killed in battle, just one of the many young pilots of the Great War whose aircraft simply failed. He left two sons. His widow refused to grieve him alone. Within months of the Armistice she had a plan: a memorial to all the Spalding men who had died - 224 of them, more than the population of an entire small village - and she had a famous architect in mind. Her aunt was the garden designer Gertrude Jekyll. Through Jekyll she knew Edwin Lutyens, the architect already at work on the Cenotaph in Whitehall and on the great cemeteries of the Western Front. McLaren wrote to him. He agreed. And she made one absolute condition: her husband must receive no special honour. He would be one name among 224.

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Image: Richard Croft | CC BY-SA 2.0

Spalding War Memorial: The Architect of Grief

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Design by British architect Edwin Lutyens (1869-1944). Drawing by Harry Waring, possibly H. F. Waring, possibly Henry Franks Waring, active in the 1920s but no further details known and identification not certain., Public domain. Edwin Lutyens had spent his pre-war career designing country houses for the rich. From 1917 onwards he gave nearly all his time to memorialising the war dead. For the Imperial War Graves Commission he designed the Stone of Remembrance, used in the first British cemeteries from 19...

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Image: Design by British architect Edwin Lutyens (1869-1944). Drawing by Harry Waring, possibly H. F. Waring, possibly Henry Franks Waring, active in the 1920s but no further details known and identification not certain. | Public domain

Spalding War Memorial: A Town Argues

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Thorvaldsson, CC BY 3.0. Spalding did not simply accept the gift. The proposal generated debate in the local press through the rest of the war and the months afterwards. Alternative schemes were put forward. Why not convert Ayscoughfee Hall into a youth centre instead? Why not a simple clock on the corn ...

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Image: Thorvaldsson | CC BY 3.0

Spalding War Memorial: What Was Built

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Richard Croft, CC BY-SA 2.0. The memorial that stands today was constructed by Hodson Limited of Nottingham at the south end of the Ayscoughfee Hall gardens, replacing an old folly known as the Owl Tower. It cost £3,500 in 1922 money - perhaps £200,000 today. Barbara McLaren and her father-in-law each contri...

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Image: Richard Croft | CC BY-SA 2.0

Spalding War Memorial: Unveiling and Afterwards

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bearas, CC BY-SA 4.0. The unveiling took place on 9 June 1922. General Sir Ian Hamilton, who had commanded at Gallipoli, presided. Reverend Alfred Jarvis dedicated the memorial. Hamilton's speech that day did not pretend the war had ended war. The result has been so different, he told the gathered cro...

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Image: Bearas | CC BY-SA 4.0