Vera Brittain – WomenstatuesUK

(1893-1970)

Brampton Park, Newcastle Under Lyme, Staffordshire

It is 8^th August – high summer – but there is an air of autumn in the park where this statue is set, as if the trees and plants have had enough of dry hot days and have begun to shed the odd leaf in preparation for darker days.

Vera Brittain was born in Newcastle Under Lyme. She began English Literature studies at Oxford but as the First World War broke out she signed up as a Voluntary Aid Detachment. Affected by the loss of loved ones during this time she became involved in the pacifist movement and her writing reflected her thoughts on the futility and tragedy of war.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/vera-mary-brittain

Is this a statue of Vera Brittain? The nurse on the bench is a memorial to all women who lost loved ones in war but it is a fitting tribute to Brittain and beautifully crafted.

The statue, together with Brittain’s prose on the paving, captures the essence of suffering. The downward sorrowful gaze of the figure looks down at the note,’The King commands me to assure you of the true sympathy of His Majesty and The Queen in your sorrow’.

The paving reads:-

‘I sat in a tree-shadowed walk called The Brampton and mediated on the War.

It was one of those shimmering autumn days when every leaf and flower seemed to scintillate with light, and I found it very hard to believe that not far away men were being slain ruthlessly….

It is impossible, I concluded, to find any satisfaction in the thought of the destruction of men, whether they be English, French, German or anything else, seems a crime to the whole march of civilisation.’

Vera Brittain, 1914, from Testament of Youth, 1933.