Otago Sculpture Trust

Walden Architect/ R.A. Hosie, artist.

Many small communities were determined to erect their own memorials of the

1914 - 18 War. The Otago Peninsula Fallen Soldiers' Memorial, for example, has forty-nine names of the men from the region who died overseas.

Unveiled on Sunday 18 March 1923 the 10 metre high monument of squared bluestone is surmounted by the figure of a solitary soldier. Unlike Dunedin's Boer War Memorial of 1906 where the infantryman is seen as an idealised figure, this is intimate portrayal of the ordinary soldier. He stands with his coat half open, his rifle slung over his left shoulder.

He is on perpetual sentry duty in a foreign field. However, his thoughts, it seems, are at home on the Otago Peninsula.

There is a 500 metre climb from the road to the memorial and this makes visits awkward. However, it is visible from most of the Peninsula and, on a clear day, it can even be seen from St Andrews Street in the heart of the city. In fact, it might be argued that its principal function is to be seen from a distance since, when the viewer stands in front of the granite stone where the names of the forty nine are inscribed, it is impossible to get a clear view of the carved figure. Instead the visitor naturally turns and looks out over the astonishing vista of the harbour and the city in the distance.

The architect, Edward Walden, designed many commercial and public buildings around Dunedin, the best known being the Carnegie Public Library. The artist, Robert Hosie, advertised himself as a sculptor from 1916 to 1924 and then disappeared from the Dunedin art scene. There is also a memorial board with plaster angels by Hosie in the collection of the Otago Settler's Museum.

A family who still farm the neighbouring land donated the rock on which the memorial stands. It was first known as Big Stone, then as Arthurs Seat, after the hill in Holyrood Park near  Edinburgh.

Richard Dingwall