[2] Designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, Thiepval has been described as "the greatest executed British work of monumental architecture of the twentieth century".

The grounds of the original château were not chosen as this would have required the moving of graves, dug during the war around the numerous medical aid stations.

It was inaugurated by the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VIII) in the presence of Albert Lebrun, the President of France, on 1 August 1932.

A large inscription on an internal surface of the memorial reads: Here are recorded names of officers and men of the British Armies who fell on the Somme battlefields July 1915 February 1918 but to whom the fortune of war denied the known and honoured burial given to their comrades in death.

On the Portland stone piers are engraved the names of over 72,000 men who were lost in the Somme battles between July 1915 and March 1918.

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission states that over 90 per cent of these soldiers died in the first Battle of the Somme between 1 July and 18 November 1916.

[14] Included on this memorial are sixteen stone laurel wreaths, inscribed with the names of sub-battles that made up the Battle of the Somme and subsequent actions, in which the men commemorated at Thiepval fell.

The final two roundels are for 'Bapaume' and 'Miraumont', most likely referring to battles or actions on the Somme front in 1917 as the Thiepval Memorial includes the missing dead that fell before 20 March 1918.

Most of the soldiers buried here – 239 of the British Commonwealth and 253 of the French – are unknown, the bodies having been reburied here after discovery between December 1931 and March 1932, mostly from the Somme battlefields but some from as far north as Loos and as far south as Le Quesnel.

The cemetery's Cross of Sacrifice bears an inscription that acknowledges the joint British and French contributions That the world may remember the common sacrifice of two and a half million dead, here have been laid side by side Soldiers of France and of the British Empire in eternal comradeship.Each year on 1 July (the anniversary of the first day on the Somme) a major ceremony is held at the memorial.