All we know about the Cenotaph at the centre of the Remembrance Sunday service
This weekend the nation will take part in remembering those killed in both word wars.
King Charles, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer will be joined by thousands of veterans who make the annual pilgrimage to central London to pay their respects. The Remembrance Sunday service will remember those killed in the two world wars and the 12,000 British servicemen killed or injured since 1945.
The service starts at 11am with two minutes of silence followed by The Last Post. Wreaths will then be laid on the Cenotaph. But why does Britain choose to do all this, congregated around the Cenotaph? Here The Mirror looks at the story behind the memorial and its placement.
What is the Cenotaph?
The Cenotaph is a war memorial in central London that is dedicated to those who died in the two world wars and in every conflict afterwards.
Following the conclusion of the First World War, it was decided a memorial should be built to honour the 880,000 British soldiers who lost their lives.
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It became particularly pressing for many families who had lost loved ones as, in 1915, the UK government banned the repatriation of the bodies of killed soldiers.
The decision meant the slain were buried in foreign cemeteries, with no local grave for families to visit.
Instead, war memorials came to be seen as ways of having a focal point to remembering those who had died on the Western Front.
Sir Edwin Lutyens designed the stone structure, with it built in 1920 and unveiled by King George V that same year.
The imposing 15ft structure was designed to look like a coffin on top of a plinth. Describing his design, Sir Edwin said it was “an empty tomb uplifted on a high pedestal”. The word cenotaph is derived from Greek, meaning “empty tomb”.
Where is the Cenotaph?
The Cenotaph is situated in Whitehall, a wide road in central London linking Trafalgar Square and Westminster.
It is regularly used as a parade routes, with the Queen’s coffin travelling down Whitehall on its way down The Mall and outside Buckingham Palace after her September 19 funeral at Westminster Abbey.
The location was chosen because Lloyd George, the then-prime minster, wanted to hold a victory parade in the aftermath of WWI, following the signing of the armistice on November 11, 1918.
Lloyd George asked Sir Edwin to design a "catafalque" — a temporary raised platform, often used to put a coffin on during a lying-in-state — as the centre point for the parade.
The temporary Cenotaph was put up in 1919, with 15,000 servicemen, including French and American soldiers, saluting the monument during the victory parade.
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More than a million people visited the site within a week of the scenes.
With the temporary structure falling into disrepair quickly, Sir Edwin set about having his permanent memorial built the following year.
What is written on the Cenotaph?
The Cenotaph monument is purposely austere, with only sparse inscriptions. At each end, on the second tier below the tomb, is a laurel wreath, echoing the one at the top.
On the sides is the inscription “The Glorious Dead” in capital letters. The only other inscription is the dates of the world wars in Roman numerals — the first on the ends, above the wreath, and the second on the sides. The structure is protected as Grade I listed.
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