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The Flanders Memorial Garden is an initiative of The
Guards Museum at the Wellington Barracks on Birdcage
Walk alongside St James’s Park where it is currently
being constructed just outside the Guard’s Chapel.
The garden is a gift from the Belgians in commemoration
of the 100th anniversary of the Great War and in thanks
to the British people for their sacrifice in liberating the
country.
It was the people of Bruges who offered safe haven to
the exiled King Charles II before he was restored to the
throne and it was in Bruges in 1656 that the first Guards
Regiment was raised to protect him. This was Lord
Wentworth’s Regiment to which the Grenadiers trace
their lineage. During the Great War the regiments fought
valiantly on Belgian soil so the symbolism of bringing
sacred soil from seventy Flanders battlefields where so
many Guardsmen fought and died is very poignant.
The soil, collected by Belgian and British schoolchildren
was put into seventy sandbags and was brought to
London on board the Belgian Navy frigate Louisa Marie
last autumn. The Louisa Marie moored alongside HMS
Belfast and the bags were loaded onto the gun carriage
of the King’s Troop Royal Horse Artillery, which was
then accompanied to the Wellington Barracks by
mounted members of the Household Cavalry from the
Life Guards and the Blues and Royals and mounted
officers of the Metropolitan Police.
The memorial garden has been designed by an
internationally acclaimed landscape architect called
Piet Blanckaert from Bruges who believes that the
garden should be a strong symbol of hope for the future.
Within a rectangular garden that represents the battle
fields of the Ypres Salient is an elevated circle that
evokes the circular aperture at the top of the Menin Gate
Memorial in Ypres, as well as symbolizing eternal life.
The John McCrae poem
In Flanders Field
has been
engraved around the outside edge of the circular memorial
which was filled with the soil brought from the battlefields
and in which poppies will grow.
The Flanders Memorial Garden was to be enclosed by
a hoarding until Remembrance Sunday when it is to be
officially unveiled by HM Queen Elizabeth but under
pressure from the London Borough of Westminster The
Guards Museum has agreed to remove the hoarding in May.
You can visit The Guards Museum, the Guards Chapel and
the Flanders Memorial Garden as part of the
Bearskin &
Blighty: London in the Great War
tour available
weekdays all year. Each ticket for the tour includes a
donation towards the cost of The Flanders Memorial Garden
The Bearskin & Blighty Tour available now and through
into the coming years also tells the story of the Zeppelin
raids on London and life on the Home Front and includes
visits to the Great War in Portraits exhibition at the National
Portrait Gallery, the Great War Propaganda exhibition at the
Museum of London Docklands or the new First World War
Galleries, depending on when you come.
Please see the facing page for more details.
You can watch a short video of Guards Museum Curator
Andrew Wallace talking about the gathering of the sacred
soil for the Flanders Memorial Garden from 70 Belgian
battlefields with video of the procession through London
from HMS Belfast to the Wellington Barracks
