War Memorial Shelters

These two wooden shelters stand about one hundred meters apart along the Broad Walk of Kensington Gardens. They were built in nineteen nineteen using the remaining funds of a charitable organization called the Silver Thimble Fund. This charity originated from the simple idea of an embroiderer named Miss Hope Elizabeth Hope-Clarke, who realized that women sewing garments for soldiers often broke their thimbles. She began collecting these broken thimbles and other damaged precious metal trinkets from sewers across the country, selling them to be melted down to fund life-saving medical equipment for the front lines.