Memorial de Chatham – Kent

Le monument est érigé en 1869 à la mémoire des soldats français décédés durant les guerres napoléoniennes (1803-1814), en particulier les prisonniers enterrés sur l’Île de St Mary.

Il s’agit d’un monument de type gothique avec les inscriptions suivantes:

Here are gathered together many brave soldiers and sailors, who having once been foes, afterwards captives of England, now find rest in her soils.  Remembering no more the animosities of war, or the sorrows of imprisonment, they were deprived of the consolation of closing their eyes amongst the countrymen they loved.  But they have been laid in an honourable grave by a nation who knows how to respect valour and to sympathise with misfortune.

This memorial, built to Admiralty order by convict labour in 1869, and placed in the prisoners of war cemetery on St. Mary’s Island, was re-erected here in the autumn of 1904, when a contemplated, bust subsequently abandoned, extension of Chatham Dockyard, necessitated the removal of the prisoners to their new grave beneath it.