page_title: Armed Forces Memorial
section_title: Design
hierarchical_section_title: Armed Forces Memorial / Design
caption_attribution_description: English: Armed Forces Memorial, Alrewas, Staffordshire. The Gates sculpture group showing opening in wall aligned on the sun's position for 11 November.
context_page_description: The Armed Forces Memorial is a national memorial in the United Kingdom, dedicated to the 16,000 servicemen and women of the British Armed Forces killed on duty or through terrorist action since after the Second World War. It is within the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire.
context_section_description: The Memorial cost £6 million to build, principally funded by sales of a commemorative Trafalgar coin sold by the Royal Mint, and grants from the Millennium Commission. The Memorial takes the form of an earth tumulus (mound), 100 metres in diameter. Inspiration for the Memorial came from "the ancient burial mounds of our ancestors … that recollects monuments like Silbury Hill and the mounds around Stonehenge.
  The mound is surmounted by a Portland stone circle, with openings to the east and west and an obelisk at the eastern end. Within the circle are two straight stone walls, with bronze sculptures at their centres. The names of the 16,000 service personnel are carved into the Memorial's stone walls, with space for an additional 15,000 names to be added. The names of all those killed in combat, in training, on peacekeeping operations and on exercise are included. It includes the dead from operations in Palestine, Korea, Malaya, the Falkland Islands, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Northern Ireland.
  The earliest qualifying date for casualties being listed on the memorial is 1 January 1948.  This follows on from the closing date for commemoration by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission of 31 December 1947, although the memorial also lists casualties of the 1947-48 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine (pre-independence Israel).  Names are grouped under year of death, within each year grouped under the force in which they served.
  The bronze sculptures are the work of Ian Rank-Broadley. The Stretcher Bearers sculpture shows a wounded serviceman borne by comrades, watched by grieving family. It represents the cost of armed conflict on those left behind. The Gates sculpture group shows the body of a fallen serviceman taken into the arms of his comrades, and a figure pointing through the Great Gates of Eternity to Paradise. For this work Rank-Broadley received the 2008 Marsh Award for Excellence in Public Sculpture.
  The structure is aligned so that at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, the sun's rays will stream through the gap to illuminate the centre of the Memorial.
caption: Armed Forces Memorial, Alrewas, Staffordshire. Southern sculpture showing opening in wall aligned on the sun's position for 11 November (photographed 16 November 2007)
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