Not many people know about the Monument of Belgian Gratitude in the heart of London. Standing on the Thames Embankment opposite Cleopatra’s Needle, it was unveiled in 1920 to thank Britain for receiving thousands of Belgian refugees during the First World War.
Some 250,000 Belgian civilians fled to Britain during the First World War, along with about 150,000 soldiers and, as the war went on, 25,000 wounded Belgian soldiers.
It was the largest number of refugees ever to arrive in Britain, representing about three to five percent of the Belgian population.
Two years into the war, in 1916, a group of Belgian refugees came up with a plan for a monument, paid for with a public fundraising campaign.
Designed by Sir Reginald Blomfield, the monument features a bronze sculpture by the Belgian artist Victor Rousseau, who spent the war years as a refugee in London.
The sculpture represents a Belgian woman flanked by a boy and a girl carrying garlands of flowers.
The monument was unveiled on a symbolic date exactly five years after the British nurse Edith Cavell was executed in Brussels.
Derek Blyth’s hidden secret of the day: Derek Blyth is the author of the bestselling “The 500 Hidden Secrets of Belgium”. He picks out one of his favourite hidden secrets for The Brussels Times every day.
