Artist: George Wade
Location: Junction between Agricultural Hall Plain, Castle Meadow, and Market Avenue
Description: Corrosion, Deterioration
Description (iconographical): The memorial is set at at the top of Agricultural Hall Plain on a pyramid shaped stone plinth, resting on a tall pillar with columns at each corner, set at the junction of three roads, market Avenue, Castle Meadow and Agricultural Hall Plain. The site remains basically the same but the ever increasing traffic now leaves it isolated and difficult to view.
Peace, crowned with laurel and holding an olive branch in her left hand, has just alighted on the globe and raises her right arm to sheathe her sword. The figure, to quote the Norfolk Chronicle "symbolizes the coming of peace", replacing victory which, in the words of Alan Borg, "is a recurring image ..dominating local and town memorials, where civic and national pride could mingle and the emphatic statement 'We won!' seemed neither equivocal nor inappropriate." But here peace marks the end of the bloody conflict in Southern Africa. The British reverses in the early part of the Boer War resulted in a patriotic upsurge of volunteers. The monument reflects this, commemorating over three hundred men from Norfolk, who had joined a wide range of regiments, including the 2nd Battalion of the Norfolk Regiment which had suffered more from disease - 55 men dead - than at the hand of the Boers - 15 dead in all. Planning had begun following a meeting in Norwich on 15 December 1900, but nothing was done until action against the Boers stopped early in June 1902. By the 21st June the sub-committee had accepted George Wade's plans for the memorial, whose celebration of peace, rather than victory, meant that Wade re-used the imagery of the Norwich Memorial for the Memorial at Maritzburg, South Africa in 1911.
Inscriptions: Two plaques on each side of the four-sided pillar. The upper and bigger ones inscribed with the names of the 310 war dead - the lower ones acknowledging the commissioners: ERECTED BY THE COUNTY OF NORFOLK and CITY OF NORWICH AS A TRIBUTE TO THE MEMORY OF THE GALLANT NORFOLK MEN WHO DIED FOR THEIR COUNTY DURING THE WAR IN SOUTH AFRICA A.D. 1899-1902.
The statue was unveiled by Major General A.B. Wynne C.B., Commander in chief of the Eastern Region, on the afternoon of 14 November 1904, after a service of dedication of four memorial windows in the north transept of Norwich Cathedral, with bronze wall plaques recording the names of the dead