Leicester’s war memorial is on the edge of a park just out of the town centre. It was designed By Lutyens who seems to have been the go to guy for war memorials and for 364 days of year it’s a fairly imposing archway sitting at the top of a slight rise with a nice–ish view over the city but on November 11th it has it’s moment. The moment is sunrise because our war memorial is solar aligned – sadly this doesn’t seem to be widely known (I’d hoped to find a picture to illustrate but can’t see any online and don’t have any myself because this is the third year in a row it’s rained). I’ve only managed to catch one sunrise but it was quite an experience and unless it’s actually blowing a gale and raining (today) it’s a good place to be at 7.22 am on a November morning.
At that time of day there’s hardly anyone around – a few dog walkers, people like me on their way to work and a few people on their way home – a good time for reflection and for wondering what it might have felt like at sunrise on November 11th 1918. How can a war end at 11am? How do you go on being at war for those last few hours knowing it’s for nothing very much anymore? Still there’s something hopeful about sunrise – new beginnings and all that, and it strikes me as such a fantastic touch to a memorial – a way of bringing stone to life and making it really demonstrate what all that sacrifice of life might have been for. It’s uplifting without being sentimental and I can heartily recommend it even if it does mean getting up ridicoulously early on cold dark mornings.