Abinger Common War Memorial

About

Abinger Common War Memorial is a First World War memorial in the village of Abinger Common in Surrey, south-eastern England. The memorial was destroyed by a German bomb during the Second World War and rebuilt in the late 1940s. One of 15 war crosses by Sir Edwin Lutyens, it is a grade II listed building.

Background: In the aftermath of the First World War and its unprecedented casualties, thousands of war memorials were built across Britain. Amongst the most prominent designers of memorials was the architect Sir Edwin Lutyens, described by Historic England as "the leading English architect of his generation". Lutyens designed the Cenotaph on Whitehall in London, which became the focus for the national Remembrance Sunday commemorations, as well as the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing—the largest British war memorial anywhere in the world—and the Stone of Remembrance which appears in all large Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemeteries and in several of Lutyens's civic war memorials. The Abinger Common memorial is one of fifteen War Crosses by Lutyens, all sharing a broadly similar design. Many of Lutyens' commissions for war memorials originated with pre-war clients and friends...