Cenotaph

In 1922 Birkenhead's War Memorial Executive Committee organised a competition to design a war memorial for the town. There were 21 designs submitted and they were exhibited in the Birkenhead Art Gallery and Museum in February 1923. Of these, 20 were in the Classical style used by Edwin Lutyens for The Cenotaph in Whitehall, London. The designs were reviewed by Charles Reilly, the Professor at the Liverpool School of Architecture. Among the designs of which he approved was that of Lionel Budden, one of his former students, who was then a senior lecturer at the School of Architecture. The assessor for the competition was Major Gilbert Fraser, President of the Liverpool Architectural Society.…

The memorial is in Portland stone with the figures and the names of those lost in Westmorland stone. The memorial stands about 7.6 m high. It has a rectangular plan, the longer sides facing east and west. The monument is set on three steps on a paved plateau, and is flanked by flagstaffs. On the longer sides are panels containing the names of those who fell in the First World War, and on the shorter sides, in smaller panels, are those who died in the Second World War. On the shorter sides, above the panels, are carvings of female figures, one holding a wreath, the other a medallion. Above the figures and panels on all sides is a frieze of festoons of laurel. Below the panels on the long…