The loss of life and those wounded was huge. The Battle of Verdun in 1916 was the longest single battle of the First World War. Upper Woodcote Model Village with the village green as its focal point was the first part of the estate to be developed in about 1903 with much of the rest laid out later up until about 1916. He stated ‘the name Garden First means that the garden shall not only have prominence but that partial garden construction shall be carried out before any buildings are erected so that there may be pleasant shade of trees and the shelter afforded by live hedges and matured shrubs before the first houses are built’. Webb, an estate agent born in Croydon, bought 260 acres of farmland near Purley to create the ‘Garden First’ estate at Woodcote. Webb conceived the idea of creating an Anglo-French memorial as ‘a tribute to our fallen neighbours’ to commemorate French sacrifices on the Western Front. The Promenade de Verdun memorial landscape was created by William Webb (1862-1930) in 1922. ‘Roads of Remembrance as War Memorials’, a pamphlet published in 1920, advocated the planting of trees along existing highways, as well as the construction of new roads as memorials. The aftermath of the First World War saw the biggest single wave of public commemoration ever with tens of thousands of memorials erected across England. The inscription on the north face reads: AUX/ SOLDATS DE FRANCE/ MORTS GLORIEU SEMENT/ PENDANT LA GRAND GUERRE. The obelisk was carved in a Cornish quarry by The London Granite Co. The south end of the road terminates in a circular drive with a backdrop of tall hedges, in front of which on a crescent-shaped grassed area is the tall obelisk memorial of granite c 6m high. The obelisk is an imposing architectural monument which acts as a focal point and is integral to the memorial landscape. The site was chosen for the memorial as there is a gradual rise in the land here from which views of five counties could originally be seen. The memorial landscape consists of a long straight road, c 0.5km mile long and the only straight road on the Woodcote Estate, leading up to an obelisk memorial. The Promenade de Verdun memorial landscape (registered at Grade II) is located on the Woodcote Estate in Purley. The cloister is 137 meters (449 ft) long and contains 42 interior alcoves.Description A 600 metre long straight road lined with Lombardy poplars and with a granite obelisk at the southern end. At the top of the tower is a rotating red and white "lantern of the dead", which shines on the battlefields at night. It was offered by an American benefactor, Anne Thornburn Van Buren, in 1927. ![]() The tower contains a bronze death-bell, weighing over 2 tonnes (2.0 long tons 2.2 short tons), called Bourdon de la Victoire, which is sounded at official ceremonies. The tower is 46 meters (151 ft) high and has a panoramic view of the battlefields. George Desvallières designed the stained glass windows. The architects of the ossuary were Léon Azéma, Max Edrei, and Jacques Hardy. The ossuary was officially inaugurated on 7 August 1932 by French President Albert Lebrun. It was inaugurated in 1923 by Verdun veteran André Maginot, who would later approve work on the Maginot Line. In front of the monument, and sloping downhill, lies the largest single French military cemetery of the First World War with 16,142 graves. The families of the soldiers that are recognized here by name contributed for those individual plaques. A few of the names are from fighting that took place in the area during World War II, as well as for veterans of the Indochina and Algerian Wars. On the inside of the ossuary building, the ceiling and walls are partly covered by plaques bearing names of French soldiers who died during the Battle of Verdun. Through small outside windows, the skeletal remains of at least 130,000 unidentified combatants of both nations can be seen filling up alcoves at the lower edge of the building. ![]() The ossuary is a memorial containing the remains of both French and German soldiers who died on the Verdun battlefield. ( December 2021) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources.
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