Hartburn War Memorial
war memorial in Hartburn, Northumberland, England, UK

Hartburn War Memorial is a First World War Memorial in the village of Hartburn, Northumberland, in the north-east of England. The memorial, designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, was unveiled in 1921 and is today a grade II listed building.
Background
In the aftermath of the First World War and its unprecedented casualties, thousands of war memorials were built across Britain. Amongst the most prominent designers of memorials was the architect Sir Edwin Lutyens, described by Historic England as "the leading English architect of his generation". Lutyens designed the Cenotaph on Whitehall in London, which became the focus for the national Remembrance Sunday commemorations, as well as the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing—the largest British war memorial anywhere in the world—and the Stone of Remembrance which appears in all large Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemeteries and in several of Lutyens's civic war memorials. Hartburn's memorial is one of fifteen War Crosses by Lutyens, all sharing a broadly similar design.
Many of Lutyens' commissions for war memorials originated with pre-war clients and friends. The commission for Hartburn came from Mr and Mrs Straker of nearby Angerton Hall, the gardens of which Lutyens renovated with Gertrude Jekyll in 1904.
History and design
The war memorial was built by HJ Robinson of Clay House in nearby Meldon. It was unveiled on 31 July 1921 by Colonel EPA Riddel, CMG, DSO, commander of the 149th (Northumberland) Brigade.
The public source identifies “Hartburn War Memorial” as war memorial in Hartburn, Northumberland, England, UK. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Hartburn, Memorial and memorial.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Nov 6, 2024. The linked authority identifier is Q26294020. Authority coordinates are 55.169, -1.862. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1921 and 1904.
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This entry incorporates text from “Hartburn War Memorial” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.