Boer War Memorial, Cannon Hill Park

Description:This postcard shows the unveiling of the memorial to servicemen from Birmingham killed in the Boer War conflicts in South Africa around the beginning of the twentieth century. The memorial was sculpted by Albert Toft, who was born in Handsworth and had served an apprenticeship at Wedgwood before attending government schools of art in Staffordshire, and studying at the National Art Training School, later the Royal College of Art, in London.^{<small>1</small>} Toft also designed the Welsh memorial to those killed in the Boer War, which was erected in Cathays Park, Cardiff in 1910.^{<small>2</small>} Toft was chosen from fifteen sculptors. His design portrays both war and peace, featuring two soldiers at either side of a gun carriage, and a female figure standing over them holding a shield showing the City Arms and an olive branch.^{<small>3</small>} The Birmingham Daily Mail had launched an appeal in March 1903 for a memorial to the 521 servicemen who died in South Africa, which raised £2,000.^{<small>4</small>} Potential sites at Old Square and Corporation Street were rejected,^{<small>5</small>} and in April 1904 the Parks Committee met with members of the South African War soldiers’ memorial scheme to discuss a site at the northern end of Cannon Hill Park, near Edgbaston Road.^{<small>6</small>} In January 1905 members of the Parks Sub-Committee met with Albert Toft to discuss the foundation work, and construction of the memorial began in April 1906.^{<small>7</small>} The unveiling ceremony was held on 23 June 1906, attended by Lieutenant General Sir Ian Hamilton, with barriers erected to control the crowds and to protect the flower beds, trees and shrubs.^{<small>8</small>}

The memorial immediately became a focus for the remembrance of those who died during the conflict, and in 1907 permission was granted for the Legion of Frontiersmen to hold a demonstration on Empire Day, 24 May, and to place a wreath on the monument.^{<small>9</small>} The Parks Committee minutes include regular references to commemorative events held at Cannon Hill Park by Boer War veterans, even after the First World War, for which the scale of casualties obscured the remembrance of earlier conflicts. In 1939, there were still several hundred survivors of the Boer War living in Birmingham,^{<small>10</small>} and there are references in the late 1940s and early 1950s to the annual visit to the war memorial in Cannon Hill Park by members of the South African War Veterans Association.^{<small>11</small>}


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¹ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, http://www.oxforddnb.com/public/articles/128015489659538293.html (viewed July 2010)
² Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
³ George T. Noszlopy, Jeremy Beach (ed.), Public Sculpture of Birmingham (Liverpool, 1998), p.106
⁴ Noszlopy
⁵ C.A. Vince, History of the Corporation of Birmingham (Birmingham, 1923), vol.4, p.492
⁶ BCC Parks Committee Minutes, 25 April 1904 [BA&H: BCC AL/1/1/12]
⁷ BCC Parks Committee Minutes, 23 January 1905; 30 April 1906 [BA&H: BCC AL/1/1/13]
⁸ BCC Parks Committee Minutes, 25 June 1906 [BA&H: BCC AL/1/1/13]
⁹ BCC Parks Committee Minutes, 7 May 1907 [BA&H: BCC AL/1/1/13]
¹⁰ Birmingham Mail (28 January 1939)
¹¹ BCC Parks Committee Minutes, 7 July 1947; 7 July 1952 [BA&H: BCC]</small></font>