Stanway War Memorial

The First World War saw the deaths of over 880,000 members of the British Armed Forces. The scale of loss, impacting almost every community in the country, occasioned a deep emotional need to honour the dead; "no greater wave of public remembrance has ever happened in history". This reaction saw the creation of tens of thousands of war memorials across Britain, from simple wooden plaques recording the names of the dead, to national monuments such as The Cenotaph on Whitehall in London.{{efn|During the centenary commemorations in 2018-2018, Historic England listed, or upgraded existing listings, for over 2,500 war memorials. The village of Stanway in north Gloucestershire, a small settlement…

The Stanway memorial comprises four steps, supporting a column with a square base and cylindrical pillar, and surmounted by the statue of St George and the dragon in bronze. The column is constructed of north Cotswold stone mined at the local Jackdaw Quarry, while the steps are local sandstone. The square base of the column carries inscriptions on all four faces; three record the names of the dead of the village, while the fourth bears a four-line epitaph: [see box]. David Verey and Alan Brooks, in their Gloucestershire 1: The Cotswolds volume in the Buildings of England series, revised and reissued in 2000, describe the memorial as "superb" and Fisher's statue as "outstandingly fine". The…