Georgetown Cenotaph

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article does not cite any references or sources. (February 2008) Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed.

The Georgetown Cenotaph is a war memorial in Georgetown, Guyana located at at the junction of Main and Church Streets.

The Cenotaph was unveiled on August 14, 1923 by the then Governor, Graeme Thomson, and the first Armistice Day observance took place at the Church Street Monument on 11 November 1923. On the four faces of the base of the Cenotaph are inscribed the four words - Devotion, Humanity, Fortitude and Sacrifice.

The Cenotaph is a national memorial to Guyanese soldiers who lost their lives in the First and Second World Wars. Guyanese soldiers served and fought in such far off places as Egypt, France, Belgium and East Africa.

After the end of the Second World War in 1945 Armistice Day was renamed Remembrance Day or Remembrance Sunday, and observed on the first or second Sunday of November. Since 1956 it was internationally agreed to observe Remembrance Day on the second Sunday of November.

Before 1923, the site where the Cenotaph now stands was occupied by an ornate drinking fountain which was erected in 1867 to mark the completion of the Water Works in 1866. That drinking fountain, no longer functional, now stands on the green opposite St. Rose's High School in Church Street, just a few hundred feet from its original location.