Crimean War Memorial, City of Westminster

Sir George Gilbert Scott’s next commission in the Westminster area is only too conspicuous today. This is the Westminster School Crimean War Memorial, which he designed in 1858 and was erected in 1860, in front of Westminster Abbey. It is a single red granite shaft capped by a foliated capital supporting a lantern containing figures by J. B. Philip, topped by St. George and the Dragon by John Richard Clayton. It was praised at the time as a ‘pleasing innovation’ to the usual classical arrangement with Scott apparently remembering the columnar monuments of Venice and Verona.

The Builder, 1858, p. 694.Companion to the Almanac or Year Book of General Information of 1861 (Knight and Co., London, 1861), p. 225.Pevsner, N., and Bradley, S., London 6: Westminster, Buildings of England (Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2003), p. 277.