Cambridge War Memorial
A bronze soldier walking home up Hills Road, unveiled in 1922 and known as The Homecoming.
Cambridge War Memorial stands on Hills Road outside the Cambridge University Botanic Garden. A bronze soldier, a little over life-size at seven feet, strides on a carved limestone plinth. The work is known as The Homecoming or Coming Home, and it was unveiled in 1922. It has been Grade II listed since 1996.
The figure
The soldier wears the uniform of the Cambridgeshire Regiment and marches towards the city centre with his rifle on his left shoulder, his stride deliberately exaggerated. He glances back over his right shoulder along Station Road towards the railway station. He is bareheaded, his helmet in one hand together with a rose; another rose lies at his feet. A laurel wreath is wound around the rifle, and a German helmet hangs from his pack as a trophy. The plinth is brick faced with limestone and has rounded ends; carved armorial bearings fill its upper half, and the lower half carries an inscription picked out in red paint: "TO THE MEN OF CAMBRIDGESHIRE AND THE ISLE OF ELY, THE BOROUGH AND UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE WHO SERVED IN THE GREAT WAR 1914–1919", with words for 1939–1945 added later.
How it came about
A committee of city, county and university representatives began work in January 1919. Ideas ranged from a clock tower to cottages for wounded soldiers; the final scheme paired a memorial in Ely Cathedral and gifts to Addenbrooke's with a monument in the city. A site on Parker's Piece was rejected in favour of Hills Road. The memorial was moved in 1952 to an island in the middle of the road and, during redevelopment, reinstalled in 2012 on the south side, closer to the Botanic Garden.
Practical notes
It can be visited at any time from the pavement and costs nothing. Expect traffic on Hills Road.
Nearby
Within a few minutes' walk
