Great Eastern Railway War Memorial, Liverpool Street Station

Great Eastern Railway war memorial, unveiled in June 1922 and relocated in the 1990s.

MATERIALS: marble and bronze.

DESCRIPTION: the memorial is affixed to the west face of the Great Eastern Hotel at the upper concourse level of the station, repositioned here in the 1990s as part of the station remodelling. It has eleven marble panels inlayed with metal lettering listing more than a thousand names. At either side are fluted Roman Doric columns with a spiralling carved wreath of bay leaves. The columns support a segmental broken pediment in the tympanum in which are richly and deeply-carved ribbons and foliage in high relief. Below this a tablet in the centre of the frieze records: ‘TO THE GLORY OF GOD AND IN GRATEFUL MEMORY OF THOSE MEMBERS OF THE / GREAT EASTERN RAILWAY STAFF WHO, IN RESPONSE TO THE CALL OF THEIR / KING AND COUNTRY, SACRIFICED THEIR LIVES DURING THE GREAT WAR’. Below are attached additional tablets with bronze plaques featuring profile relief portraits of Captain Charles Fryatt and Field Marshall Sir Henry William Bart. That to the centre, signed Van Golberdinge, records: ‘TO THE MEMORY OF CAPTAIN CHARLES FRYATT / + JULY 27TH 1916 + / FROM THE NEUTRAL ADMIRERS OF HIS BRAVE / CONDUCT AND HEROIC DEATH / THE NETHERLANDS SECTION OF THE LEAGUE / OF NEUTRAL STATES JULY 27TH 1917’. The other, to the right, is ‘TO THE MEMORY OF / FIELD MARSHAL SIR HENRY WILSON BART / G.C.B. D.S.O. M.P. / WHOSE DEATH OCCURRED ON THURSDAY 22ND JUNE 1922 / WITHIN TWO HOURS OF HIS UNVEILING / THE ADJOINING MEMORIAL’. To the left of these smaller memorials a passenger lift has been integrated, with marble cladding to its doors to match the memorial.