It’s a milestone for the North Sydney War Memorial
The Cenotaph in St Leonards Park is 100 years old. It is the main war memorial for North Sydney, and was begun in October 1923 then dedicated on 10 October, 1926.
The monument was, and still is, remarkable. A young student architect named Frank Thorp won the design competition for the project with an edifice that was clearly inspired by Edwin Lutyens’ war memorial in Whitehall, London, completed in 1920. That monument established a model for Great War memorials within the British Empire. It was a relatively simple but very affecting ensemble of stone, stepped towards the top to suggest a classical monument of some form.
Indeed, the name given to it by Lutyens, a ‘cenotaph,’ had origins in ancient Greece and Rome. That word is from the Greek meaning empty tomb, something most apt for Britain’s pre-eminent WWI memorial, as most of the dead remained where they fell on the battlefields of France and Belgium.
The idea of an empty tomb was even more appropriate for Australia, for those who died in British hospitals were buried nearby while the majority of the 60,000 or so dead lay where they died across Europe and Asia Minor.
Australia had a non-repatriation policy so that only one body, that of Major General Bridges, was returned to Australia during the conflict. Only one other has ‘come home,’ the ‘unknown soldier’ who was reinterred at the Australian War Memorial in 1993.
Not all Australian war memorials commemorate the dead alone. Many, such as that at Mosman, are inscribed with the names of all who served from a particular area. But all cenotaphs, by definition, should be dedicated to ‘the fallen.’
The North Sydney War Memorial Committee which organised the construction of the Cenotaph anticipated inscribing 600 names and that was one of the few criteria included in the design competition. The eminent architect and competition judge, John Sulman, had expressed a preference for something ‘of a massive but simple and dignified character.’ Possibly Frank Thorp had read that note, for his design expressed all those things.
Indeed, the North Sydney Cenotaph was the largest memorial in New South Wales when it was dedicated. It dwarfed the Cenotaph in Martin Place, Sydney, dedicated the following year. And it remains the largest cenotaph in NSW and possibly the largest in Australia, if one discounts the enormous Hobart memorial which some regard as more an obelisk than a cenotaph.
In the end the North Sydney memorial bore 568 names based on correspondence from next of kin. That is about 14% of the estimated 4,000 local men who served. Terrible though it is, that figure is below the national average of around 18% and makes the size of the memorial somewhat anomalous. However recent research has discovered another 196 men with strong local associations who died in the war. North Sydney, it seems, lost one fifth of its volunteers. A Commonwealth Saluting Their Service grant will allow those extra names to be added in this centenary year.
Historical Services, North Sydney Council.
