Blackmoor War Memorial

The memorial was commissioned by the politician William Palmer, 2nd Earl of Selborne and his wife Maud Palmer, Countess of Selborne to commemorate their second son Captain Robert Stafford Arthur Palmer, who died of wounds in January 1916 aged 27, after the Battle of Umm-el-Hanna, while attached to the 1/4th Battalion of the Hampshire Regiment in Mesopotamia during the First World War. Captain Palmer is also commemorated on the Basra Memorial. The memorial was unveiled in 1920. The cloister and cross were designed by Sir Herbert Baker. Buoyed by the success of this design, he was later commissioned to design the Winchester College War Cloister; both Robert Palmer and Baker's sons were…

The three sides of the memorial cloister stand behind and to either side of lawn, upon which stands a memorial cross. The structure is open on the fourth side, to the south, with steps leading up from the road that passes by. The wood-framed arcade stands on walls of Bargate stone, and is roofed with Horsham stone. The cloister is paved with stone flags, with a bench along the rear (north) wall to either side of the fountain in a central niche on the north wall incorporates a fountain with lion's mouth spout, intended to provide drinking water to refresh the children at the village school nearby, as a deliberate attempt to bring "animation and lively activity" into a memorial to the dead.…