Rand Regiments Memorial

Anglo-Boer War Memorial
The Anglo-Boer War Memorial
Former names	Rand Regiments Memorial
General information
Status	Extant
Type	Memorial
Location	Eckstein Park
Town or city	Saxonwold, Johannesburg
Country	South Africa
Coordinates	26°09′50″S 28°02′28″E / 26.164°S 28.041°E / -26.164; 28.041
Groundbreaking	30 November 1910
Completed	1914
Owner	City of Johannesburg
Design and construction
Architect	Edwin Landseer Lutyens
Architecture firm	Baker & Fleming

The Anglo-Boer War Memorial was originally called the Rand Regiments Memorial and dedicated to the men of the Witwatersrand who joined as British soldiers in the Rand Regiments and who had lost their lives during the Second Boer War (1899–1902). The memorial is now next door to the South African National Museum of Military History. It was rededicated on 10 October 1999 to all people who died during the Second Boer War and renamed the Anglo-Boer War Memorial.

Soon after the Second Boer War ended in 1902, Randlord Sir Lionel Phillips and others proposed in 1904, a memorial to commemorate the British soldiers that had died in the war. A Rand Regiments' Memorial Committee was formed to raise money for the memorial. In September 1904, Captain George A. Hamilton-Dickson proposed a motion that a site be found for a memorial and that the Town Council start a scheme to build it. The Johannesburg Town Council thought that the memorial should be dedicated to all those that had died in the war but Phillips and the committee would disagree and continued with the project. Sir Lionel Phillips and his company, H. Eckstein and Co, purchased 40 acres (16 ha) in the Sachsenwald Plantation (Saxonwold) as land for the memorial.

On 30 November 1910, Field Marshall the Duke of Connaught and Lord Methuen reviewed a group of volunteers at Milner Park before being accompanied by a detachment from the Imperial Light Horse to the Sachsenwald Plantation (Saxonwold). There in front of a solemn gathering, the Duke laid the corner-stone to the future memorial. The site had only been approved a month before the Duke's visit by the town council and no architect or design had been finalized.

The memorial was designed in 1911 by architect Sir Edwin Lutyens, before he became famous for his war memorials after the end of the First World War. The design for the memorial was a 20 metres (66 ft) tall stone four-arched structure which was completed in 1913. The design of the memorial is said to have been based on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris as well as other Roman triumphal arches. The town council laid out five vistas that would lead up to the memorial and fenced off the 40 acres. On the columns are the names of members of the raised Rand regiments who lost their lives in the war and is made up of members of the Bethune’s Mounted Infantry, Commander In Chiefs Bodyguard, Johannesburg Mounted Rifles, Thorneycroft’s Mounted Infantry, South African Light Horse, Imperial Light Horse, Railway Pioneer Regiment, Imperial Light Infantry and Rand Rifles.