The First World War produced casualties on an unprecedented scale; men from every

town and village in Northamptonshire died in the war, with the exception of two
thankful villages (East Carlton in the north of the county and Woodend in the
south). In the war's aftermath, thousands of memorials were built across Britain.
[1]

Among the most prominent designers of war memorials was architect Sir Edwin
Lutyens, described by Historic England as "the leading English architect of his
generation".[2] Prior to the First World War, Lutyens established his reputation
designing country houses for wealthy patrons; in the war's aftermath, he devoted
much of his time to memorialising the casualties. He served as one of the three
principal architects to the Imperial War Graves Commission (IWGC; later the
Commonwealth War Graves Commission, CWGC) and designed numerous war memorials for
towns and villages across Britain, as well as several elsewhere in the
Commonwealth. He was responsible for the Cenotaph on Whitehall in London, which
became the focal point of the national Remembrance Sunday commemorations; the
Thiepval Memorial to the Missing, the largest British war memorial anywhere in the
world; and the Stone of Remembrance (also known as the Great War Stone), which
appears in all large Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemeteries and forms part
of several of his civic memorials, including Northampton's.[2][3][4][5]