The Lombardy poplars, typical of French roads, grow in a mixture of French and English soil. To ensure that the monument was safely transported to Purley a representative of the company accompanied it all the way. The obelisk was carved in a Cornish quarry by The London Granite Co. Webb chose as the site for the memorial a gradual rise in the land: this suggested the opportunity for a road leading up to a tall obelisk as a focal point, from which views of five counties could be seen. There are several tree memorials in Britain to Verdun and a number of streets named after the battle. He referred to the year 1923 when differences of opinion between France and England were acute, and some of the French papers mentioned the Promenade de Verdun as evidence that public opinion in England was more sympathetic to France than Britain's politicians led them to believe. When relations between England and France, which King Edward VII had fostered and the war reinforced, might become strained in the future, Webb hoped that the tribute would cement the friendship between the two nations. Webb wrote a short article on the memorial for the Purley Review in 1927, on the occasion of a visit by the French President, Alexandre Millerand, to England, in which he explained the rationale behind the construction of the monument. It was a national struggle, a battle for the survival, the honour, and the sacred heart of France. The ordeal of Verdun is even more deeply ingrained in the French consciousness than the Somme is in the British. He knew that the French would never abandon Verdun but he failed to break through to the town and finally abandoned the operation in December 1916 after almost a million soldiers had been killed. Verdun is located between Germany and Paris and its rich history endowed it with mythic status in the French psyche, a fact known to he German Commander-in-Chief Von Falkenhayn when he launched a siege of its fortifications in February 1916. The loss of life and those wounded was huge. The Battle of Verdun in 1916 was the longest single battle of the First World War. Upper Woodcote Model Village with the village green as its focal point was the first part of the estate to be developed in about 1903 with much of the rest laid out later up until about 1916. He stated ‘the name Garden First means that the garden shall not only have prominence but that partial garden construction shall be carried out before any buildings are erected so that there may be pleasant shade of trees and the shelter afforded by live hedges and matured shrubs before the first houses are built’. Webb, an estate agent born in Croydon, bought 260 acres of farmland near Purley to create the ‘Garden First’ estate at Woodcote. Webb conceived the idea of creating an Anglo-French memorial as ‘a tribute to our fallen neighbours’ to commemorate French sacrifices on the Western Front. The Promenade de Verdun memorial landscape was created by William Webb (1862-1930) in 1922. ‘Roads of Remembrance as War Memorials’, a pamphlet published in 1920, advocated the planting of trees along existing highways, as well as the construction of new roads as memorials. The aftermath of the First World War saw the biggest single wave of public commemoration ever with tens of thousands of memorials erected across England. The inscription on the north face reads: AUX/ SOLDATS DE FRANCE/ MORTS GLORIEU SEMENT/ PENDANT LA GRAND GUERRE. The south end of the road terminates in a circular drive with a backdrop of tall hedges, in front of which on a crescent-shaped grassed area is the tall obelisk memorial of granite c 6m high. The obelisk is an imposing architectural monument which acts as a focal point and is integral to the memorial landscape. The site was chosen for the memorial as there is a gradual rise in the land here from which views of five counties could originally be seen.
The memorial landscape consists of a long straight road, c 0.5km mile long and the only straight road on the Woodcote Estate, leading up to an obelisk memorial. The Promenade de Verdun memorial landscape (registered at Grade II) is located on the Woodcote Estate in Purley.
About the memorial: A 600 metre long straight road lined with Lombardy poplars and with a granite obelisk at the southern end.
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