Busbridge War Memorial

About

Busbridge War Memorial is a First World War memorial in the churchyard of St John's Church in the village of Busbridge (now part of the parish of Godalming), Surrey, in south-eastern England. It was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens and unveiled in 1922. It is one of several structures in the area for which Lutyens was responsible. His connection with Busbridge began in the 1880s when he partnered with Gertrude Jekyll, a local artist and gardener who lived at nearby Munstead Wood; the relationship led to many more commissions for Lutyens for country houses. Lutyens became renowned for his war memorial work after designing the Cenotaph in London, which he named after a garden seat at Munstead Wood. Busbridge is one of several war memorials he designed in connection with his pre-war work.

The memorial is one of 15 crosses Lutyens designed, mostly for small villages. It consists of a 7-metre-tall (23-foot) tapering shaft with short arms moulded to it near the top. It stands at the end of a triangular churchyard, at the junction of two roads, making it a prominent landmark. No names are inscribed on the memorial; they are instead recorded inside the church, which also has stained-glass windows to commemorate the war. The cross was unveiled by General Sir Charles Monro, the colonel of the local regiment, on 23 July 1922, in front of a large crowd. Lutyens went on to design two monuments in the same churchyard to members of the extended Jekyll family. The war memorial became a listed building in 1991 and was upgraded to Grade II* in 2015 when Historic England declared Lutyens's war memorials a national collection.

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