Memorial

{On the left side of the rusty information panel:}
The war memorial at King’s Cross was first erected in 1920 by the Great Northern Railway, listing those employees who gave their lives in the Great War.  After the Second World War, it was also dedicated to the employees of the London and North Eastern Railway who fell in that conflict.

Following relocation in 1973, only the eleven original name panels remained.  These marble tablets were restored and reinstated here in 2013, supported in new steel columns.

The spacing and heights of the columns and their plinths echo John Singer Sargent’s 1919 painting Gassed, an outline of which is shown above.  This monumental canvas, part of the Imperial War Museum collection, depicts eleven soldiers guiding each other across a battlefield following a gas attack.

This memorial, standing at the end of the railway worked by the men named here, honours all who fought and fell in the two wars.

{On the right side of the rusty information panel:}
To the immortal memory of the men of the Great Northern Railway who gave their lives in the Great War. 

1914-18
1939-45
{The two date ranges share their “19”.}
To the immortal memory of the men of the London and North Eastern Railway who gave their lives in the Second World War

The original memorial erected in 1920 by the Great Northern Railway Company thirty yards west of here was relocated in 1973 by the British Railways Board.  This new memorial incorporating the original name panels was erected here by Network Rail.

{The panels are the very ones that we previously transcribed so click here to see the list of names.}