The site is adjacent to the first headquarters of the British Red Cross, originally located at 7 St Martin's Place.

She was arrested in August 1915, court-martialled, found guilty of treason, and shot by a German firing squad on 12 October 1915.

[3] Frampton adopted a distinctively Modernist style for the memorial, which comprises a 10 feet (3.0 m) high statue of Cavell in her nurse's uniform sculpted from white Carrara marble, standing on a grey Cornish granite pedestal.

The last three lines of the inscription quote her comment to Reverend Stirling Gahan, an Anglican chaplain who was permitted to give her Holy Communion on the night before her execution.

The face of the granite block behind the statue of Cavell bears the inscription "Humanity", and higher up, below the Virgin and Child, "For King and Country".