Scottish war memorials

Scottish war memorials commemorate the sacrifices made as early as 1263 up to the recent war in Iraq and the conflict in Afghanistan The earliest memorials record the battles fought against Viking and English invaders.

[1] At the same time a proposal for a national war memorial led to the creation of the magnificent shrine at Edinburgh Castle.

At the same time as the civic and national memorials were being erected factories,[3] banks,[4] golf clubs,[5] boys' clubs,[6] schools,[7] universities[8] churches,[9] railways,[10] police,[11] post offices[12] and even a prison[13] erected war memorials to those men and women who had gone to war.

Five of the most common types are Celtic cross, obelisk, cairn, mercat cross, and statue but they can also take the form of plaques or tablets of bronze, brass, marble, granite or wood; memorial gardens; fountains; rolls of honour; Crosses of Sacrifice;clock towers; lychgates; parks; halls; hospitals; bandstands; stained glass windows; altars; baptismal fonts; sporting cups and medals.

Scottish artists and architects including Sir Robert Lorimer, Alexander Carrick, Charles Pilkington Jackson, Thomas John Clapperton and William Birnie Rhind and others created some memorable monuments across the county.

This led to some memorials being District Nurses,[18] hospital beds, holiday cottages for war widows and orphans.

The Royal British Legion Scotland also run an annual campaign called the "Best Kept War Memorial".

When these organisations leave a building, refurbish it or close then the future of the war memorials in their care is not always assured.

Greenside Church in Edinburgh have photographs of the memorial windows of St James's which were demolished along with the building in 1975.

A roll of honour in Livingston was recovered from a rubbish skip after the Social Club it was in was refurbished in 2008 and the memorial was thrown away.

Running since December 2006 as a voluntary project to photograph and record all of Scotland's war memorials and make them online for free.