Congratulations to the Armed Forces Memorial at the National Memorial Arboretum, which has won the Heritage category of the National Lottery Awards!
The Armed Forces Memorial opened in October 2007 and is an incredibly moving memorial of national significance.
It “gives recognition and thanks for those who have died while on duty or as a result of terrorist action since the Second World War and acknowledges the enduring sacrifice of those who mourn their loss”.
Designed by Liam O’Connor with sculptures by Ian Rank-Broadley, the memorial is second in order of national importance to the Cenotaph and comprises a 140ft diameter circle of stone. Amazing 1968 is the only year since 1945 with no fatalities listed – there are 16,000 names carved upon the memorial, with, sadly, space for more as necessary.
At the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, Armistice Day, a shaft of light shines through a gap in the wall to fall onto the stone wreath in the centre of the memorial. It is an incredible place.
In fact, the National Memorial Arboretum (in Alrewas, near Lichfield) itself is fantastic. I first went there last year to interview the director Charlie Bagot Jewitt for an article for Staffordshire County Magazine (from which a couple of parts of this post are taken 
!), and was really taken with it.
There are more than 130 memorials to different organisations and a two-minute silence is observed every day in the Millennium Chapel.
Walking round the Arboretum, you are immediately struck by the peace and tranquillity of the site, but also the depth of thought that has gone into the memorials. Everything has a reason, from the “floating rocks” from the Falklands at the Royal Engineers plot (“because there’s nothing the Engineers can’t do”), to the dwarf apple trees in the British Limbless Ex-Servicemen Association garden so wheelchair users can admire the blossom and pick the fruit.
The examples are endless: the main avenue, The Beat was funded by every police force in the UK and is made up of chestnuts because the first truncheons were crafted from this wood; the antelope azaleas in the Falklands memorial remember the sinking of HMS Antelope; and 2,535 oak trees represent the number of merchant ships and fishing vessels sunk in the Second World War.
The beauty of exploring the Arboretum is the sheer number of things you can (sometimes literally) stumble upon. The small carved animals in the Wind In The Willows garden commemorating children, for example, or the stark Shot At Dawn memorial, depicting one of the 306 soldiers killed during the First World War for “cowardice” or desertion. At every turn you learn and appreciate something more.
The memorial that moves me more than any other is the Stillborn and Neonatal Death Society garden, with its heartbreaking messages of love from bereaved parents left on stones along the pathway and a gorgeous (and very sad) sculpture of a sleeping baby. Whenever I visit I always pause in that garden and shed a tear.
So well done again to the Armed Forces Memorial! I hope this award means that more people will visit and get to know what a great place this is.
I should stress that it is not a sad place, despite some of the things I say above. It is really a place of hope for the future, and a living tribute to those who have gone before.
They sound like lovely places to visit.
Our Armed Forces have been closely united with yours over the years and in many battles, and their sacrifice means much to me as well, despite the fact that I’m an American.
Thank you
It is an incredible place. There’s a 9/11 memorial there, as well as memorials commemorating wartime campaigns involving international forces, so American losses are remembered too.