University of Reading War Memorial

Memorials to servicemen who died in the First World War were erected soon after the end of the conflict. Plans to build a permanent memorial at the University of Reading unfolded in 1919, when William Macbride Childs, the principal of the college, printed a pamphlet suggesting several ideas. The final design was ultimately made by Herbert Maryon, a teacher of sculpture at the university; he would later gain broad recognition in a second career at the British Museum, where he conserved many of the finds from the Sutton Hoo ship-burial, termed "the most important single discovery in British archaeology." His initial proposal, made in 1919, was for a tower of 120 ft that would have cost…