page_title: North Eastern Railway War Memorial
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: North Eastern Railway War Memorial / History
caption_attribution_description: English: North Eastern Railway War Memorial in York - rear view of Stone of Remembrance with York Minster in the background
context_page_description: The North Eastern Railway War Memorial is a First World War memorial in York in northern England. It was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens to commemorate employees of the North Eastern Railway who left to fight in the First World War and were killed while serving. The NER board voted in early 1920 to allocate £20,000 for a memorial and commissioned Lutyens. The committee for the York City War Memorial followed suit and also appointed Lutyens, but both schemes became embroiled in controversy. Concerns were raised from within the community about the effect of the NER memorial on the city walls and its impact on the proposed scheme for the city's war memorial, given that the two memorials were planned to be 100 yards apart and the city's budget was a tenth of the NER's. The controversy was resolved after Lutyens modified his plans for the NER memorial to move it away from the walls and the city opted for a revised scheme on land just outside the walls; coincidentally the land was owned by the NER, whose board donated it to the city.
  The NER memorial was unveiled on 14 June 1924 by Field Marshal Lord Plumer.
context_section_description: The North Eastern Railway War Memorial was finally constructed once the ancient Monuments Board approved Lutyens' modified design; it was unveiled by Field Marshal Herbert Plumer, 1st Baron Plumer (later 1st Viscount Plumer) at a ceremony on 14 June 1924, and dedicated by the Archbishop of York Cosmo Gordon Lang. A crowd of five to six thousand people gathered for the ceremony, among them multiple civic officials and officers of the LNER and former NER, including Sir Ralph Wedgwood, chief officer of the LNER; the Sheriff of York; and the lord mayors of Bradford, Hull, and York.  Sentries from the Durham Light Infantry stood at the four corners of the Stone of Remembrance. Among those to give speeches was Edward Grey, 1st Viscount Grey of Fallodon, a member of the NER's board and the former foreign secretary famous for his remark "the lamps are going out". Grey spoke of the losses caused by the war: "the old North Eastern board and its general manager numbered some twenty persons. Out of those twenty, four lost sons in the war; three lost only sons. There is no reason to suppose that proportion is exceptional". At the conclusion of the service, the "Last Post" was sounded and the crowd observed two minutes' silence. The city's war memorial was unveiled a year later.
  The inscriptions, particularly the names of those killed, suffered from exposure to the elements. Restoration work, including re-carving, was carried out in the 1980s, funded by donations from the British Railways Engineers Ex-Servicemen's Association match-funded by British Rail. Erosion continued in the years following and in lieu of re-carving them and causing further damage to the memorial, the names were recorded in a book which is held by the National Railway Museum.
  The memorial was designated a grade II* listed building (a status which offers statutory protection from demolition or modification, defined as "particularly important buildings of more than special interest" and applied to about 5.5% of listed buildings) on 10 September 1970. In November 2015, as part of commemorations for the centenary of the First World War, Lutyens' war memorials were recognised as a national collection and all 44 of his free-standing memorials in England were listed or had their listing status reviewed and their National Heritage List for England entries updated and expanded. As part of this process, the York City memorial was upgraded to grade II* to match the NER's memorial.
caption: The rear of the Stone of Remembrance, viewed from the main part of the memorial. The NER's former headquarters is to the right and York's city walls are to the left; York Minster is visible in the background.
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