Memorial Centre

After the First World War, thousands of memorials went up across Britain. Gerrards Cross wanted something different.

The local vicar, the Reverend John Matthew Glubb, argued for a “living memorial”, one that would serve the village and its returning servicemen rather than stand alone as a monument. He proposed converting the old vicarage stables into a community centre.

So instead of forming a war memorial committee, as most villages did, Gerrards Cross formed a community association. Its remit was to establish and run a centre that was itself the war memorial.

Sir Edwin Lutyens designed more than 40 war memorials after the First World War, including the Cenotaph in Whitehall. Gerrards Cross is the only one he was asked to design as a working building.

Built around the 18th-century vicarage stables, it sits well back from the road behind hedges: a rectangular red brick structure, mostly painted white, with a slate roof and a large portico in antis. Four white sandstone Doric columns support the roof above the portico, which shelters a stone plaque running the full height of the wall, listing the men of the village killed in the war.

Inside, a central hall opens onto two side wings in a U shape, each reached through doors at either end of the portico. From the front the building looks single-storey. From the rear, a shorter roofline reveals an attic above the hall.

Lutyens originally proposed a matching portico at the back to allow a larger hall, but it was never built. The project cost around £3,500, roughly £195,000 today, raised entirely by public subscription. Charles Wynn-Carington, 1st Marquess of Lincolnshire and Lord Lieutenant of Buckinghamshire, formally opened it on 14th October 1922.