Cannock Chase German Military Cemetery

Cemetery building, memorial courtyard and adjoining terrace at Brindley Heath, Cannock Chase. Built between 1959 and 1967 by Harold Doffman of Doffman and Leach of Stafford, commissioned by the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgraberfursorge (the German Association for the care of war graves). The building is constructed in grey buff brick with concrete and sandstone.

The layout consists of a rectangular central range containing reception rooms, with caretaker's accommodation to the left and a semi-enclosed terrace beyond. A cloister link connects to a square Hall of Honour, which leads through to the cemetery and the Zeppelin Terrace beyond.

The exterior presents an unadorned entrance front with a single doorway set in a stone frame. The reception block and accommodation have rectangular window openings. To the left of the Hall of Honour is a grassed terrace, part-enclosed by low walls and overlooking the cemetery. To the right, steps lead to the Zeppelin Terrace, an enclosed grassed area with low retaining walls containing four stone slabs that commemorate the four crews of Zeppelins shot down over England during the First World War.

The main reception room features a back-lit plan of the cemetery etched on glass. The cloister link is defined by an arcade of rectangular steel posts carrying a timber roof. The square Hall of Honour is treated as a cloister in reverse, with a central folded plate concrete roof in nine sections and open sides. In the centre stands a reclining bronze figure of a fallen shrouded warrior, signed by Johann Evangwimmer of Bavaria and placed on a sandstone plinth.

The cemetery was opened in June 1967 following a 1959 agreement between the British and Federal German Governments. It concentrates many (though not all) burials of German nationals who died in the First and Second World Wars: 2,143 from the First World War and 2,797 from the Second World War are buried here, with 1,307 others still buried elsewhere. The burials include numerous civilian internees, many of whom died in the Spanish Influenza epidemic of 1918. The site adjoins Cannock Chase National Park and lies close to a Commonwealth War Grave cemetery to the south-west.

The landscaping of the shallow valley in which the cemetery is laid out was designed by Diez Brandi with local consultants Derek Lovejoy and Partners. It is reminiscent of North German heathland and is included on the English Heritage Register of Historic Parks and Gardens. The cemetery is of considerable historic interest as the largest single concentration of German military interments in the country. The building provides a subtle foil to the landscaping. The Hall of Honour, with its notably Teutonic sculpture displaying clear inspiration from the sixteenth-century painter Hans Grunewald in its anguished depiction of a corpse, and its secular commemorative function, contrasts with the more specifically religious chapels found in British and American military cemeteries.

The architect Harold Doffman (1907–1998), trained at Liverpool University, spent much of his career in the public sector in the Midlands. This is his best-known work.