What is the Gibraltar War Memorial (British War Memorial) on Line Wall Road?
Short answer
The Gibraltar War Memorial, often called the British War Memorial, is Gibraltar's First World War memorial on Line Wall Road. Its white Carrara marble group of a sailor and a soldier was unveiled on Thursday 27 September 1923 and stands on an esplanade above a double flight of steps, with two Russian guns from the Crimean War beside it.
Detailed answer
The sculpture is the work of Jose Piquet Catoli of Barcelona. A sailor and a soldier stand side by side, guarding the flag and holding up a gilded laurel wreath. The marble group is 18 feet high from its base to the top of the flagstaff, and it stands on a 10-foot pedestal of local limestone cut at the Catalan Bay quarry. Its cost of £1,700 was raised by public subscription, and it was unveiled by the Governor, General Sir Charles Monro.
Tablets on the four faces of the pedestal remember the citizens of Gibraltar who gave their lives in the Great War, the officers and seamen of the Gibraltar Straits Patrol, and the servicemen of all services who died in that war and lie in North Front Cemetery. The fourth records that the memorial was erected by the people of Gibraltar.
The esplanade itself is two years older. In 1921 the Governor, General Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien, had this stretch of the old Line Wall lowered to make an open recreational area, with steps down to Reclamation Road. A tablet records that the esplanade and steps form a memorial of his regard for the welfare of the people of Gibraltar. The area later became known as the Line Wall Boulevard.
Two more tablets are set into the steps. One was given by the Association of Gibraltarian Residents in the Argentine Republic, to the heroes of Gibraltar and of the Straits Patrol of 1914 to 1918. The other, dated Saturday 21 July 1945, was given by Belgium in thanks for the welcome Gibraltar gave between 1940 and 1944 to Belgians from enemy-occupied Europe on their way to serve in the Allied struggle.
The two cannon on the esplanade are Russian guns captured in the Crimean War of 1854 to 1856. The British Government presented four of these guns to Gibraltar in 1858; the other two stand at the entrance to the Alameda Gardens. The pair here were placed beside the memorial in the early 1990s.
The memorial stands between King's Bastion and Zoca Flank, just west of the City Hall and John Mackintosh Square.