The Cenotaph , Southampton The Southampton Cenotaph is a stone memorial at Watts Park in Southampton , England , originally dedicated to the casualties of the First World War . The memorial was designed by Edwin Lutyens and features a cenotaph on a plinth atop a gently curved pillar . The monument was intended to be abstract and graceful , encouraging a perception of the soldier having fallen in a peaceful , " beautiful death " . Decisions over which names should be engraved on the Southampton Cenotaph proved controversial in the 20th century , but the design was heavily influential in determining the form of Lutyens ' more famous Cenotaph in Whitehall . Long - term weather damage to the memorial led to a glass wall being built alongside it in 2011 , incorporating the names of those Southampton citizens who died in subsequent conflicts . History . The First World War between 1914 to 1918 caused casualties on a massive scale . Shortly after the signing of the Armistice in November 1918 , a public meeting was held in the city of Southampton which voted to construct a memorial " to those who have fallen in the Great War " . A committee , headed by the Lord Mayor of Southampton , Sidney Kimber , was elected and discussions began as to what form such a memorial should take . The committee decided that their preferred option would be to construct a single , high - quality memorial in a good location within Southampton and began to consider architects and locations , with a proposed budget of £10 , 000 . Alfred Gutteridge , an architect on one of the sub - committees , knew and recommended the architect Edwin Lutyens ; at this time Lutyens had been involved in the design of several war cemeteries but only one war memorial , which he had designed for South Africa . Elements of the committee met with Lutyens in January 1919 to discuss options for the memorial . Lutyens argued against the committee ' s initial proposed location on Asylum Green in favour of Watts Park , which the committee agreed to . Lutyen ' s initial design consisted of a large ceremonial pillar with a substantial archway on either side , each archway supporting a soldier lying on a sarcophagus . This was rejected due to the likely cost and instead Lutyen suggested a single empty sarcophagus or cenotaph , supported by a plinth on top of a pillar , with pine cone s mounted on urn s standing on each side . This was agreed to at a public meeting in September and detailed work on the project began . The London firm of Holloway Brothers were selected as the contractor for the memorial ; the project was completed to time at a total cost of £9 , 845 . The Cenotaph was opened by General John Seely at a public ceremony on 6 November 1920 that included the playing of the Last Post and a two - minute silence . Kimber was very pleased with both the project and Lutyens , and he hoped to build a second war memorial in Southampton using the architect , although this project never came to fruition . The Southampton Cenotaph was influential in later designs for war memorials both in England and abroad ; it was the first such cenotaph to be built and simpler versions of the same design were widely used to commemorate the First World War , including famously at the Cenotaph in Whitehall , London . Issues arose after the erection of the memorial concerning the names inscribed on the Cenotaph . The committee had identified 1 , 793 names of Southampton men , and a number of women , who had died during the war and these had been inscribed on the Cenotaph . After the unveiling of the monument various relatives approached the committee requesting that additional names be added ; after a newspaper campaign in the " Southern Daily Echo " newspaper , Kimber agreed to this and 203 additional names were inscribed in 1921 . Another name was added in 1922 , bringing the total to 1 , 997 . More controversy surrounded the exclusion of the Jewish war dead from the memorial . Jews in Southampton had donated to the committee on the understanding that the memorial would commemorate not only Christian casualties but Jewish ones as well : one in ten adult male Jews in Southampton died during the conflict , twice the proportion for Southampton as a whole . Following the final decision on the design of the Cenotaph , however , which featured a prominent Christian cross , Jewish names were predominantly excluded from the memorial and only one Jewish name was finally inscribed on it . By the start of the 21st century it became evident that the soft stone of the Cenotaph was deteriorating badly as a result of water damage and frost . Recutting the names on the monument was discounted as a solution due to the long term damage this repeated work would cause to the Cenotaph ' s structure : the decision was made to expand the war memorial instead . A glass wall consisting of eight large panels 2 . 85 m ( 9 ft ) by 1 . 2 m ( 4 ft ) in size , was built alongside the Cenotaph at a cost of £130 , 000 . The panels were engraved with the names of the World War I casualties and , in addition , those from Southampton who had died in later conflicts . The Memorial Wall included a total of 2 , 368 names from the First World War , 927 from the Second World War and three from subsequent conflicts . This addition to the Cenotaph was opened on 11 December 2011 . Design and symbolism . Lutyens final design for the Southampton Cenotaph reused elements of his previous work . The central pillar on which the plinth supporting the sarcophagus rests is a variant of the War Stone intended for the War Shrine in Hyde Park , which Lutyens designed in 1918 but which was never taken forward . The pillar is in fact slightly curved in imitation of the pillars at the Parthenon in Athens , and a similar effect is later repeated by Lutyens at the Whitehall Cenotaph . The urns on either side of the Cenotaph are drawn from Lutyens ' design for the military cemetery at Étaples , where the same design is used , but without the additional pine cones . Unlike Lutyens ' later work , the Southampton memorial is relatively heavily carved , including a large cross , the Southampton city crest , the arms of the different Armed Services , two lions and a sword , as well as the dedication to " Our Glorious Dead : Their Name Liveth For Evermore " . The thin sheets of white Portland stone on the outside of the monument hide an inner brick core . Lutyens ' design predominantly draws on a cleaner , more streamlined version of the classical symbolism used in earlier monuments . Earlier monuments of the Second Boer War typically included figures of soldiers , sometimes falling in conflict , but always passing away heroically in a " beautiful death " with classical symbolism often used to distance the event of death from the observer , as typified in William Colton ' s work at Worcester . Lutyens ' work at Southampton reacted to the criticism of this sometimes cluttered approach by adopting cleaner architectural forms , but still retaining the ideal of a peaceful , " beautiful death " . The Southampton Cenotaph makes use of an abstract , beautiful design intended to remove the viewer from the real world , and focus them on an idealised sense of self - sacrifice and death .