Published in Windlesora 40 (2026)
© WLHG
A short talk I gave to the Windsor Local History group in May 2024 had a Christmas quiz as its starting point. The answer to the question ‘Sir Edwin Lutyens designed the Cenotaph, the Thiepval Monument in France and the India Gate in Delhi. What did he design in Windsor?‘ was given as ‘Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House, Windsor Castle.‘ Well, the house wasn’t designed for Windsor –it was first seen by the public as part of the British Empire Exhibition in Wembley Stadium in 1924 – nor was it about Windsor except in the connection with Queen Mary, and it was an odd thing for the architect to be finding time for. He was still involved with the major project in Delhi as well as coping with the many commissions for war memorials, large and small, which came to him from public and private sources after he was knighted in 1918 for his war graves work and had received the Royal Gold Medal for architecture (for the Cenotaph) in 1921. My own answer to the question was by stretching the boundary of Windsor to include Runnymede and so to the idea that Lutyens and the memorial were the connection to make. By the time George V died in January 1936, Lutyens’ eminence made him the inevitable choice as designer of a memorial and a line runs clearly from the George V Memorial in Thames Street to the tomb of George V in St George’s Chapel and on to the Runnymede memorial lodges and kiosks in which the combination of Portland stone and red brick is reminiscent of so many of his earlier major buildings, and the Runnymede Bridge.
But I was made to think again about him by the appearance, at virtually the same time as my talk, of Clive Aslet’s book Sir Edwin Lutyens: Britain’s Greatest Architect? (Triglyph Books). Here is a compact overall view of the total range of the architect’s work which leaves the reader free of the rich variety, comedy, scandal and colour of Lutyens’ actual life – his own unconventional upbringing, his relationships with women, especially with his even more unconventional wife– there is more here awaiting dramatisation than the content of Downton Abbey, but it can all be put aside for some serious awareness of professional achievement. The book is dedicated to the members of the Lutyens Trust (founded 1984 following the exhibition of Lutyens’ work at the Hayward Gallery in 1981). Aslet is himself a trustee. In an article in The Times (4 May 2024), he, in a sense, summarised his book by choosing five of Lutyens’ greatest creations to represent a busy creative life, covering his early collaborative work with the famous garden designer Gertrude Jekyll, then the monumental scale of the Presidential Palace (originally the Viceroy’s House) in New Delhi, third Lindisfarne Castle perched on a great rock outcrop, then his most famous work the Cenotaph, and finally the Midland Bank in the City of London. In the book itself he goes beyond Lutyens’ existing buildings by giving a chapter to the tremendously ambitious design for the Catholic Cathedral in Liverpool of which the dome would, if it had ever been built, have been bigger than that of St Peter’s in Rome. By the time of Lutyens’ death on New Year’s Day 1944, only a fraction had been built, and after the war there was never the money to complete it.
Not unexpectedly, Windsor plays no greater part in this survey than in the Christmas quiz from which I began. A paragraph is given to the Dolls’ House, which Aslet sees as an architectural model that details ‘the comfortable and civilised way of life’ before the First World War, perhaps Lutyens’ own ideal home – he certainly became engrossed in it and personally devoted to its completion; and the inclusion of designs for the garden in all four seasons by Gertrude Jekyll makes it a reminiscence of the architectural planning of his own younger days. We may also note, less sympathetically, that the house was extremely expensive and he provided far more of his own money than he could afford – about £11,000 just for lengths of lavish textiles which he hoped to recover from sponsors, but he was probably out of pocket.
If we think more generally, Aslet’s guide to the architect’s total career makes a framework within which one can focus on that part of twentieth-century history which was re-examined in the celebration and commemoration of the ending of World War 1 in 2018. 21st-century awareness of Lutyens may be said to have been reshaped by the centenary events of 2014-18 and the recalling of the cost of war in terms of the loss of lives. Historic England made a pledge to list 2,500 War Memorials to celebrate the centenary. Because of Lutyens’ national fame, he had been called on by individuals and communities to design family or local memorials, and 44 by him are now listed as a previously unrecognised National Collection (published 2015). All are protected. The Lutyens Trust now lists all of his works area by area and country by country. The Trust also restored a memorial to Lieutenant Derek Lutyens, descendant of a nephew of Edwin Lutyens, where the architect’s original cross in the churchyard of Thursley (Surrey), a place long associated with the Lutyens family, with bronze eagle’s wings attached, had been vandalised and the wings wrenched off and stolen.
It is not perhaps surprising that the George V Memorial in Windsor, though it is not a war memorial, has grown in stature as a National Monument. Lutyens himself is commemorated in Windsor by a Blue Plaque for being the chief architect of New Delhi as well as designer of the Whitehall Cenotaph and the George V Memorial. Where do visitors find the Blue Plaque but on the base of the George V Memorial itself? The Memorial has even appeared in some lists of sights for tourists as second only to the Cenotaph itself – because it is a public memorial, freely available to be admired, possibly now by association with the film The King’s Speech and memories of George V. Certainly the fact that I can see the original appearance of the newly sculpted stone and the flowing fountains by calling it up to my computer screen and watch the still surviving newsreel record of George VI and Queen Mary, his mother, while hearing the carefully controlled voice of the King on St George’s Day 1937, when I was two years old, gives it a sharper grip on my own mind than many other monuments.
Unfortunately, already in 1989, as Fred Fuzzens recalled in Windlesora 8, the memorial had fallen into disrepair. Among signs of general scruffiness and overgrown trees, the door to the pumping station at the back was unlocked, and a tramp was living in it. A full restoration had to be carried out at the cost of £7,000. The Windsor Heritage Committee pledged that ‘it would never fail to be a credit to the Royal Family, the Royal Borough and its citizens’ and Marks and Spencer provided a garden frontage. In Windlesora 24 (2008) John Handcock recalled the royal events of 1937 and sequence leading from Lord Wakefield’s purchase of the site from the former brewery and his presentation of it to George V on the occasion of the Silver Jubilee of 1935 up to the later dedication of the land for the memorial and the commissioning of the Portland stone from which Lutyens could form a memorial which George VI, in his first significant speech as King, would describe as ‘finely conceived and finely executed… standing as it does against the background of the Castle, reminding us of the long and wonderfully continuous history of the English Monarchy and the English people’. To this John Handcock himself added a tribute to ‘this noble addition to Windsor’s architectural heritage ‘….like a crowned, iced wedding cake set between the two great saucers, a delight to the eye…’ But to this high praise a footnote in italics was added by the editorial assistant to Windlesora (who was at the time my wife, Hester):
Seventy years later the water no longer flows. Trees, which heavily overshadow the memorial, also probably damaged the fountain mechanism with their roots. Windsor and Maidenhead Council have filled in the basin and turned it into a flowerbed.
My wife was formally thanked by the Lutyens Trust for her part in drawing attention to the need for another burst of restoration.
What do we find now in 2025? In the Spring and Summer Newsletters 111 and 112 of the Friends of the Windsor & Royal Borough Museum, here is Gerald Hyder writing:
…. The Grade II listed memorial is in a dreadful condition….. Hopefully RBWM will continue giving this area … the attention it needs.
Apparently inspections are in progress and promises are being made, but it seems that something more drastic than the Council’s sporadic smartenings is not enough. Perhaps the Lutyens Trust may be called upon?
I did not mean to end on a negative note, but it is sadly the case that Lutyens’ contribution to the Windsor area is a striking illustration of the workings of time. It is difficult to admire the graceful lines of the original Runnymede Bridge now that it has become part of a larger and more complex road junction, and similarly, we have to rely on photographs to see the imperial majesty of the original design of George V’s tomb in St George’s Chapel, which became less effective when it had to be enlarged to accommodate the tomb of Queen Mary. Even the Runnymede lodges have become blurred in effect since one of them became the National Trust tearoom while the other has been an art gallery and an office for Brunel University. Perhaps we are forced to give the answer ‘Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House’ to the question about Lutyens’ contribution to Windsor because it is indoors and not a real building anyway.
Tony Davenport
As this photograph from August 2025 shows, the monument has now been cleaned, and the two saucers hold working fountains again.
Navigation
| ◄ Previous | Windlesora 40 | Next ► |