National War Memorial

About

The National War Memorial is a monument on the north edge of the city centre of Adelaide, the capital of South Australia. It commemorates South Australians who served in the First World War and those who gave their lives. It was opened in 1931. The memorial is on the corner of North Terrace and Kintore Avenue, next to the grounds of Government House. Observances are held at the site throughout the year, with major services on Anzac Day (25 April) and Remembrance Day (11 November).

The two themes of the monument – one visible on each side – show respectively the prelude and the epilogue to war, exemplifying both the willingness of youth to answer the call of duty and the sacrifices they had to make. Symbols of war itself and its participants are left out. This symbolism, according to the designers, does not represent victory in the traditional sense but a spiritual victory, in which is displayed a "willingness to serve and to sacrifice":

It is the collective personal sacrifice of victory over self which is expressed in the... two scenes. The renunciation of all that made life sweet, of life itself, by the men who enlisted, toiled, fought, and died; by the women who waited, worked, succoured, and suffered.

First proposed in 1919, the memorial was funded by the Parliament of South Australia, making it the first Australian state war memorial to be confirmed after the war. The design was selected through two architectural competitions. The first competition, in 1924, produced 26 designs – all of which were lost before judging could be completed after fire destroyed the building in which they were housed. A second competition, in 1926, produced 18 entries, out of which the design by the architectural firm Woods, Bagot, Jory & Laybourne-Smith was selected as the winner.

Almost 35,000 South Australians served in the First World War. This number amounted to 8.5% of the South Australian population at the time, or 37.7% of men between the ages of 18 and 44. Of those who served, more than 5,000 South Australians died. In response to these deaths, Archibald Peake, the premier of South Australia, asked the state parliament to fund a memorial commemorating the victory and the sacrifice of those who had fought and fallen. The motion, presented in March 1919, received unanimous support in the House of Assembly and the Legislative Council. With the passing of this motion, the South Australian Government became the first in Australia to elect to build a memorial to the soldiers of the First World War.

Parliament decided that the new memorial should be referred to as the "National War Memorial", even though it was to be a purely South Australian monument and in spite of the term already being used to describe the memorial to the South African War of 1899–1902. At least two perspectives have been offered as to why the term "national" was employed. First, as Donald Richardson observed, the name may have been chosen to emphasise the government's intention that the memorial should commemorate all who served during the war, not just those who came from South Australia; and second, Ken Inglis argued that the name may have reflected the perception (still held in spite of federation ) that the "province is a nation".

The National War Memorial Committee was formed in order to bring the proposal to fruition, and in February 1924 the committee announced an architectural competition to find the design of the new memorial. In the preamble to the conditions of entry, it was stated that the new memorial was to serve the purpose of "perpetually commemorating the Victory achieved in the Great War, 1914–1918, the Supreme and personal sacrifice of those who participated in that War, and the National effort involved in such activities".

Entry was open to South Australians who were British subjects. A one- guinea entry fee was imposed, and those intending to submit designs were required to file a statement of intent before 29 February 1924. The competition closed on 30 September 1924. Three assessors were nominated to judge the entries: the South Australian Architect-in-Chief, A. E. Simpson; local architect Herbert Louis Jackman (representing the South Australian Institute of Architects ); and Sir William Sowden.

The committee specified a budget of £25,000; figures of both £5,000 and £100,000 had been discussed. The conditions of entry stated that the memorial was to be situated at the entrance to Government House on the corner of King William Street and North Terrace, placing it just behind the existing memorial to the South African War. This location was counter to previous suggestions: a 1919 survey of architects had proposed that the memorial should be built on Montefiore Hill, and in 1923 the plans involved erecting it at the rear of Government House rather than at the front.

The committee left open the form that the memorial would take, beyond stating that the memorial was not to be "utilitarian in character". Debate over the form led to the emergence of a number of suggestions, many of which were covered in the media of the day. These included Dame Nellie Melba 's proposal to build a carillon of bells; a suggestion by Simpson Newland to turn Anzac Highway into a "Way of Honour" by adding triumphal arches to each end; and Walter Charles Torode's plan to build a "metal and marble" monument, 30 metres (98 feet) high, on the top of Mount Lofty with an electric car to carry people to the summit.

Eventually a total of 28 architectural firms registered their intent to submit entries to the competition – a lower number than expected, possibly on account of work on proposals for the new Adelaide railway station. 26 firms submitted designs by the deadline. On 10 November 1924, before judging could be completed, the Richards Building in Currie Street was destroyed by fire, taking with it all 26 proposals.

Although most of the judging had been completed before the fire, it was suggested that the committee could use what they had learned from the entrants to propose a new competition with greater clarity about the requirements led to naught. However, a 1925 letter to the Premier, John Gunn, stated that little was to be learned from the competition, since the assessors had found that none of the designs was suitable.

Little progress had been made on the memorial by 1926. Although some debate occurred about the form the memorial would take, the focus of discussions was on the location of the memorial, the future of Government House and the role of the Governor. Several left-wing politicians argued that the grounds of Government House should be turned over to the State and used to build the memorial; conservatives desired to retain the status quo. By 1925 the committee was prepared to accept the Government House grounds as the site of the memorial, but delayed making an announcement. This proved to be fortuitous since legal issues prevented the plan from going ahead. Instead, a portion of the grounds, located at the corner of North Terrace and Kintore Avenue, was put aside for the purpose.

In 1926, after pressure from returned soldiers, a second competition was announced. Once again the budget was set at £25,000. As with the first competition, all entrants had to be South Australian British subjects, and all entries were to be judged anonymously, but this time there was to be only one assessor: John Smith Murdoch, chief architect for the Commonwealth of Australia. In deference to the previous competition, the top five entrants from 1924 were each given £75 on their submission of a new design, and all of the designs were insured by the government for £100 each.

With entries restricted to South Australians, only 18 designs were received – a figure that was "correspondingly fewer" than those received in other states where the competitions were open to all Australians. Nevertheless, in his Assessor's Report, Murdoch acknowledged that the quality of some of the proposals was such that they "probably would not have been exceeded had the competition been more open". After examining the submissions, on 15 January 1927, the design by Louis Laybourne Smith, (one of the principals of the architectural firm Woods, Bagot, Jory & Laybourne–Smith ) was selected by Murdoch as the winner.

Woods, Bagot, Jory & Laybourne-Smith had entered the 1924 competition with an arch designed by Walter Bagot, but in 1926 Bagot was away in Europe. Thus Laybourne Smith was responsible for drawing and submitting the final design, although he was clear to highlight the role Bagot played in the "architectural conception" of the monument. Although the firm was to be awarded 6% of the cost of the memorial, the principals refused all but enough to cover their own expenses, asking instead that residues (approximately £1000) be placed in a trust fund to pay for the upkeep of the work. Although this was seen as an altruistic act, Laybourne Smith was both a member of the National War Committee and sat on the sub-committee that drafted the rules of the competition, and thus it may have been considered "improper" to accept the money.

When announced to the public, the design was "universally hailed as a masterpiece". Nevertheless, in writing his report on the result of the judging, Murdoch stated of the winning architect that he "depends almost entirely on the sculptor to tell the story of the memorial, employing in his design no more architecture than that required to successfully frame and set his sculptural subjects, and to provide accommodation to the extent asked for by the conditions". This view was echoed by Inglis, who described the architecture as "essentially a frame for statuary" – an approach that he felt was "unusual" for an architect. As a result of this dependency on the sculpture, some of the other contestants expressed concerns, arguing that the contest was about architectural works rather than sculptural ones, even though the conditions of the competition specifically allowed for sculpture in the proposals.

Construction of the memorial began in 1928 with the cutting and placement of marble blocks from Macclesfield and Angaston. The South Australian Monumental Works were chosen to work on the construction, with Alan Tillett as the principal. Although no sculptor was named in the winning proposal, it did make mention of a possible candidate, who later proved to be Rayner Hoff, a Sydney -based sculptor born in England. Hoff produced the designs for the sculptures from his Sydney studio; the bronze castings from Hoff's plaster models were produced by the South Australian firm A.W. Dobbie and Company. Hoff had expressed reservations that a South Australian company would be capable of handling bronzes of the required size, but a test casting of the lion's head from the memorial was sufficient to overcome his concerns. The two angel reliefs sculpted from the Angaston marble were produced by Julius Henschke in situ from Hoff's designs, expressed through one-third sized plaster models, which Henschke then scaled to suit.

Significant delays occurred during construction after a strike by the stonemasons, who were demanding a 44-hour week and to be paid at "outside rates": rates of pay for stonemasons were based on whether or not the work was to be constructed on site in the open air, or inside under cover. Tillett was paying the lower "inside rates", even though most of the work was to be conducted on the site. However, Tillett had tendered on the basis of a 48-hour week at inside rates, and paying extra would have caused significant financial problems. Tillett eventually won after the dispute went before the courts, but the strike had caused considerable financial damage to Tillett's company, which went into receivership in 1930 and stayed in that state until after the memorial was completed.

The South Australian Government had dedicated £25,000 to the memorial project. It was estimated that bulk of the expense would be masonry at £15,300, sculptural work £8,500 and landscaping £1,200. The final cost was about £30,000.