St. Philip’s Cathedral, Birmingham
Image: St. Philip’s Cathedral, memorial plaque of Royal Warwickshire Regiment.
Memorials were often placed in places of worship. Built in 1715, St. Philip’s Cathedral is the seat of the Bishop of Birmingham. It is the oldest building in the city centre still used for it’s original purpose.
At the rear of the cathedral, near to the entrance, you will find a small memorial dedicated to the Royal Warwickshire Regiment. This was installed in 1920 and was designed by a leading local arts and crafts architect Arthur Stansfield Dixon. He was the founder of the Guild of Handicrafts and architect of their building in Great Charles Street. His son, who served with the Warwicks, died on the first day of the Battle of the Somme in 1916. He was 22 years old.
The memorial features four diamonds, one to represent each battalion made from white and green marble, with floral and leaf motifs in a border painted red and green – along with an Indian antelope, the regimental badge. While it mentions they served in France, Flanders and Italy, it does not mention Mesopotamia or the Caucasus.
The four battalions it represents had their headquarters in Thorp Street, Birmingham. They had only just departed for their summer camp when war broke out in August 1914. By the second week of August they were mobilised for war service and commenced training. In March 1915 they went from Southampton to Le Havre in France. During the course of the war the Royal Warwickshire Regiment raised 30 battalions of soldiers. Many of them came from Birmingham and the surrounding areas, who served in France, Belgium and Italy as well as Gallipoli (Turkey) and Mesopotamia (modern day Iraq) and then with the North Persia force in 1918. The 9th Royal Warwicks arrived in Baku on the Caspian Sea in August 1918.
The cathedral is also home to four fantastic stained-glass windows created by the Pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burne-Jones and designer William Morris. The design, manufacture, and installation of the windows took thirteen years and produced some of the largest and most spectacular pieces of Pre-Raphaelite art in the world. Adjacent to the Warwick’s memorial is ‘The Last Judgement’, the final window to be created for the west end of the church in 1898. Neither lived to see the window installed.
Members of the Warwicks 1914-18 living history group.
