Southampton Cenotaph Southampton Cenotaph The Southampton Cenotaph is a stone memorial at Watts Park in Southampton, England, originally dedicated to the casualties of the First World War. The memorial was designed by Edwin Lutyens and features a cenotaph on a plinth atop a gently curved pillar. The monument was intended to be abstract and graceful, encouraging a perception of the soldier having fallen in a peaceful, "beautiful death". Decisions over which names should be engraved on the Southampton Cenotaph proved controversial in the 20th century, but the design was heavily influential in determining the form of Lutyens' more famous Cenotaph in Whitehall.
The Cenotaph, Whitehall The funeral procession route passed the Cenotaph, where the waiting King laid a wreath on the Unknown Warrior's gun-carriage before proceeding to unveil the memorial which was draped in large Union Flags. The Cenotaph is flanked on each side by flags of the United Kingdom which Lutyens had wanted to be carved in stone. Although he was overruled and cloth flags were used, his Rochdale cenotaph (unveiled 26 November 1922) has stone flags. In the years following 1919, the Cenotaph displayed a Union Flag, a White Ensign and a Red Ensign on one side and a Union Flag, a White