The stone column that stands beside the Cotswold Way on Lansdown Hill is no ordinary monument. Erected in 1720 by George Granville, 1st Baron Lansdowne, it commemorates his grandfather Sir Bevil Grenville, the Royalist commander killed here seventy-seven years earlier. It is widely considered the first purpose-built war memorial in Britain — though a deeply personal one, raised by a grieving family rather than a grateful nation.
The monument stands 25 feet high and is built in the English Baroque style from ashlar stone. On its south face, a slate tablet carries a passage from Lord Clarendon's History of the Rebellion, the great contemporary chronicle of the Civil War. The north side bears two poems in tribute. Atop the column sits a griffin clutching an escutcheon — the Grenville family crest and coat of arms, a reminder that this was as much a statement of dynastic pride as of mourning.
Sir Bevil was the grandson of another famous fighting Grenville: Sir Richard Grenville, the Elizabethan sea captain immortalised by Tennyson for his last stand aboard the Revenge against fifty-three Spanish warships in 1591. Courage, it seems, ran in the blood.
“Atop the column sits a griffin clutching an escutcheon — the Grenville family crest and coat of arms, a reminder that this was as much a statement of dynastic pride as of mourning.”
The monument has been repaired three times — in 1777, 1828 and 1879 — each restoration funded by Grenville descendants. It was scheduled as an ancient monument in 1950 and designated Grade II* listed in 1956. English Heritage now cares for the site.
For Cotswold Way walkers, the monument appears just a hundred yards from the trail, an unexpected encounter with a personal tragedy set against one of the war's most savage afternoons.
