The Arch of Remembrance is a First World War memorial designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens and located in Victoria Park, Leicester, in the East Midlands of England.

The inside of the arch has a decorative coffered ceiling and the legs support painted stone flags which represent each of the British armed forces and the Merchant Navy.

Amongst the most prominent designers of memorials was Sir Edwin Lutyens, described by Historic England as "the leading English architect of his generation".

[1] Lutyens established his reputation designing country houses for wealthy clients, but the war had a profound effect on him; following it, he devoted much of his time to memorialising its casualties.

[3] At the beginning of the First World War, five part-time Territorial Force units were based in Leicester, along with elements of the regular Leicestershire Regiment.

Among them was the city's former Member of Parliament (MP), Eliot Crawshay-Williams, who served in the Middle East with the 1st Leicestershire Royal Horse Artillery.

As well as members of the public, the parade was viewed by thousands of disabled veterans, Voluntary Aid Detachment nurses, and war widows and orphans.

The committee was chaired by Henry Manners, 8th Duke of Rutland, with Sir Jonathan North (the lord mayor of Leicester) as vice-chair.

By March 1922, the project had been scaled back due to a shortage of funds and lack of public enthusiasm for the project—the costs were estimated at £23,000, of which only around £4,300 had been raised.

At a public meeting on 29 March, the committee agreed to abandon the scheme and that "a memorial worthy of the city be erected on the ground near the main entrance gates".

[12][13][14] The name was chosen to avoid the impression that the memorial would be a triumphal arch, something the committee felt was incompatible with the mood of mourning for the dead.

The structure was begun by Nine Elms Stone and Masonry Works, and completed by Holloway Brothers (who built several other memorials for Lutyens, including Southampton Cenotaph).

Due to a continuing shortfall of funding, the War Memorial Committee took out a bank loan to pay for the works to be completed.

[1][15] The memorial, in Portland stone, is a square-plan arch with four legs (piers; a tetrapylon or quadrifrons) which dominates the surrounding level ground.

The north-east arch (left, when viewed from the direction of University Road) reads REMEMBER IN GRATITUDE TWELVE THOUSAND MEN OF THIS CITY AND COUNTY WHO FOUGHT AND DIED FOR FREEDOM.

REMEMBER ALL WHO SERVED AND STROVE AND THOSE WHO PATIENTLY ENDURED; the right (south-west) arch contains an excerpt from William Blake's poem "And did those feet in ancient time": I WILL NOT CEASE FROM MENTAL FIGHT NOR SHALL MY SWORD SLEEP IN MY HAND TILL WE HAVE BUILT JERUSALEM IN ENGLAND'S GREEN AND PLEASANT LAND.

The piers are decorated with meanders (Greek key patterns) and swags and topped by stone urns, similar to the one on Lutyens's Royal Berkshire Regiment War Memorial in Reading.

[33] The setting was enhanced when, following the death of his wife in the 1930s, North commissioned Lutyens to design two processional entrances to Victoria Park, leading to the war memorial, as a gift to the city.

The gate piers at the University Road entrance are in Portland stone, matching the memorial, decorated with Tuscan pilasters and topped with an entablature and tall urns.

[1][36] The memorial was dedicated by Cyril Bardsley, Bishop of Peterborough, to the 12,000 men from Leicester and Leicestershire killed during the First World War.

It could have been obtained then quite easily, but dilatoriness on the part of those who had control and a lack of tact in dealing with the public caused the whole thing to fall flat.

In 2017, the memorial was twinned with the India Gate in New Delhi to honour members of the Indian Labour Corps who served in the First World War.

In 2018, Leicester City Council commissioned photography of the arch using a drone to reach parts of the memorial that cannot be viewed from the ground.