In the aftermath of the
First World War and its unprecedented casualties, thousands of war memorials were built across Britain. Amongst the most prominent designers of memorials was the architect
Sir Edwin Lutyens, described by
Historic England as "the leading English architect of his generation". Lutyens designed
the Cenotaph on
Whitehall in London, which became the focus for the national
Remembrance Sunday commemorations, as well as the
Thiepval Memorial to the Missing—the largest British war memorial anywhere in the world—and the
Stone of Remembrance which appears in all large
Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemeteries and in several of Lutyens' civic war memorials. The Welch Regiment is one of eight cenotaphs by Lutyens in Britain besides the one on Whitehall, one of three to serve as a memorial for a regiment (the other two being the
Royal Berkshire Regiment War Memorial in
Reading and the
Queen's Own Royal West Kent Regiment Cenotaph in
Maidstone), and the only one of his war memorials in Wales (the other eight are all in England). The squat design of the cenotaph is reminiscent of several memorials for individuals designed by Lutyens, including American actor James Keteltas Hackett and Australian businessman
Sidney Myer. The Welch Regiment originally commissioned Lutyens to design a memorial to be sited near
Gheluvelt on the
Western Front in Belgium, where the regiment had been involved in fighting. The principle was approved by the Battlefield Exploits Committee in October 1922, but six months later Lutyens wrote to the War Office to inform them that the memorial would instead be erected outside
Maindy Barracks, the regiment's headquarters, in Cardiff. ==History and design==