The Cenotaph – Lutyens’ ’empty tomb’ on Whitehall

The focus for the annual Remembrance Day commemorations each November, Edwin Lutyens’ Cenotaph is the monumental sculptural piece that stands in the centre of Whitehall. 

The most important of all of our 20th century war memorials, it now represents the fallen in all conflicts since 1914 and is where royals, politicians, military bigwigs and foreign diplomats place their wreaths of poppies on the second Sunday in November.

Its power comes from its timelessness and its universality. There are no representations of triumph, no martial imagery, no religious iconography (as a consequence of which the Catholic Herald called it ‘a pagan monument’). It honours “The Glorious Dead” and has no other inscriptions other than the dates (in Roman numerals) of the two cataclysmic conflicts of the 20th century. This is deliberate – it commemorates all those who died “irrespective of their religious creeds”.

And the structure is considerably more complex than it might first appear. The portland stone structure embodies almost infinitesimal curves rather than blocky parallel lines; the verticals taper inwards and (continuing their line upwards) would cross some 1,000 feet above the memorial, with the horizontals being the section of a circle with a radius of 900 feet. Lutyens’ intention was to create a sort of visual spiral to guide the eye upwards from the plinth to the top of the structure where sits the part of the monument that gives it its name – the sarcophagus or empty tomb, “kenotaphion” in Greek – or ‘cenotaph’ in English.

This, like Lutyens’ geometry, harks back to the ancient Greeks who venerated their dead, insisting that all must have graves. If there was no body – a sailor lost at sea or, significantly, a warrior killed in battle beyond the state’s borders – an empty tomb was erected so that the absent hero could be honoured.

And this was the purpose of the original Whitehall cenotaph, a temporary precursor to that which stands there today. Lutyens designed this version for a victory parade in July 1919 to mark the formal end of WWI after the signing of the Versailles Treaty.

This version was essentially the same design as the later permanent one, except without the geometrical trickery, but was made from wood, canvas and plaster. As troops marched past to celebrate the victory, the memorial reminded everyone present of those who had been lost in the titanic struggle that had just concluded.

It did its job well. Because bodies were not repatriated but were buried close to where the fell on the battlefields of the Western Front and beyond (and because, given the terrible nature of the war up to half of the dead could not be identified or even found), the temporary Cenotaph became a focus for individual as well as the national acts of remembrance. Over one million people came to pay their respects at the structure (queues to get up to it could be four hours long) and the pile flowers left on its base were said to be ten feet high.

The clamour to replace this temporary memorial with something permanent became overwhelming and on the second anniversary of the Armistice King George V unveiled the portland stone replacement at exactly 1100 on the 11th November 1920 as part of the commemorations that included the burial of the Unknown Warrior in Westminster Abbey, the procession for which stopped at the Cenotaph at the unveiling.

More than a century on the veterans of WWI are all gone and those of WWII are a rapidly diminishing number, but Remembrance Day parades continue, with new generations of the armed forces taking the places of those who have gone before.

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