24th Division War Memorial

The memorial you are approaching stands as a distinctively avant-garde tribute to the ten thousand men of the Twenty-fourth Division who died or went missing during the First World War. Unveiled in nineteen twenty-four, the sculpture was created by Eric Kennington, who served as a soldier himself and later worked as an official war artist. He famously refused payment for the commission and even purchased the massive block of Portland stone with his own funds. The monument depicts three weary infantry soldiers standing together in full combat gear, their feet encircled by a serpent that symbolizes the crushing pressure of the trenches.