Norman Cross Memorial

Norman Cross Memorial

This memorial column and sculpture was presented in 1914 by the Entente Cordiale Society in commemoration of the prisoners of France and her Allies who died while interned at the Norman Cross Depot for Prisoners of War. It was designed by H P Cart de Lafontaine and originally surmounted by a bronze sculpture of a French Imperial Eagle by J A Stevenson. In 1990 the column was toppled and the sculpture stolen. The column was re-erected on its present site in 1998 and a replacement sculpture by John Doubleday was installed in 2005.

The memorial stands on a small paved area at the north-east end of a short cul-de-sac off London Road, adjacent to the south-west boundary corner of the Norman Cross Depot for Prisoners of War. It is square-on-plan and faces south-west across London Road.

The base, pedestal and column are constructed from limestone while the sculpture is of bronze. The memorial consists of a bronze sculpture of a French Imperial Eagle with its wings half-spread and its talons tightly gripping a rock. The sculpture stands upon the abacus to an unfluted Roman Doric column which rises from a tall plinth with inscriptions on all four sides. The abacus is ornamented with a Greek fret pattern while the column has paterae and fluting to the necking and a bead and reel fillet. Beneath the plinth is a three-stepped base of which the middle step replicates the plan form of the prison's ditched boundary and its four recessed entrances.

The inscription on the south-east side of the plinth is carved directly into the stone while the other three sides have bronze inscription plaques fixed to them, with the plaque on the north-east being added in 2006. The south-east inscription records that the memorial was presented by the Entente Cordiale Society to the County of Huntingdon and was unveiled by the Right Honourable the Baron Weardale, President of the Society, on 28 July 1914. The south-west inscription commemorates one thousand seven hundred and seventy soldiers and sailors, natives or allies of France, who were taken prisoners of war during the Republic and Napoleonic Wars with Great Britain between 1793 and 1814 and died in the military depot at Norman Cross, which formerly stood near this spot between 1797 and 1814. The north-east inscription details the memorial's vandalism and theft in 1990, its reassembly and rededication on 31 October 1998 by the Right Honourable Sir Brian Mawhinney MP, and the installation of the replacement Eagle, sculpted by John Doubleday and inaugurated on 2 April 2005 by His Grace the Eighth Duke of Wellington. It also notes that the memorial is now in the care of Huntingdonshire District Council, the Norman Cross Napoleonic Prisoner of War Depot Memorial Trust, and Le Souvenir Français. The north-west inscription records the officials and professionals involved in the memorial's creation, including the architect H P Cart de Lafontaine and sculptor J A Stevenson, and the builders J Thompson & Co.