Chesham War Memorial, by A.G. Walker

Chesham War Memorial, by A.G. Walker.

Chesham War Memorial, Buckinghamshire, exemplifies the sculptor A.G. Walker’s war memorials, with a stone statue of a young infantryman, and panels representing the air force and navy.

Along the High Street in Chesham, where it becomes the Broadway, there is something of an open space or roundabout where stands the Chesham War Memorial. It consists of a Portland Stone statue of an infantryman, on a tall plinth with relief panels on either side, and bronze plaques listing the fallen of World War I on the front, these latter being modern replacements for the original crumbling inscription in the stone of the plinth itself. As a further addition, in front to either side are separate shorter plinths, without sculptural adornment, to those soldiers of the town who died in World War II.

Views of the Memorial.

The statue of the soldier shows him standing at ease, resting his hands on his rifle, leaning slightly forward to counterbalance his heavy backpack, really quite a subtle pose.

While the soldier is emblematic of and typifies the Army, the two panels beneath, rather decayed, cover the other two services: thus on the one side for the Navy we have a group of artillerymen gathered round a massive naval gun (picture below), and the other plaque, for the Airforce, has several officers and a biplane being readied for a bombing raid: both plaques have the principal figures mostly turned away from the viewer.

The war memorial is one of several to similar design by the sculptor – six in all, of which four of the others are in bronze, including the one at Heaton Memorial Park in Wolverhampton put up in 2020. The Chesham one was commissioned by local worthies after they saw the other stone version, in Heston in Hounslow, near Heathrow Airport, and was unveiled in July 2021.

The sculptor was the eminent Arthur G. Walker. Aside from his various war memorials – he made several to other designs too – he modelled excellent ideal figures, and various portrait and commemorative statues, of which the most well-known in London is his Florence Nightingale in Waterloo Place.

Back to Chesham, we may note that unusually, rather than the placing of the statue being decided by committee, it was located by the suggestion of the sculptor himself, who chose the Broadway because ‘in this position the sun is on the face of the statue all day… and because the statue typifies the townsmen who defended the country and therefore should most fitly stand amongst the men he represents’.

There are also good sculptural things to see in nearby Chesham Church, see this page.