Sandham Memorial Chapel was commissioned by Mary and Louis Behrend as a memorial to Mary’s brother, Lieutentant Henry Willoughby Sandham, who died at the end of World War One. It was designed by Lionel Pearson in the 1920s and was built to accommodate a series of paintings by Stanley Spencer inspired by his own experiences of the war. Created to honour the 'forgotten dead' who were not remembered on any official memorials, the series chronicles Spencer’s everyday experiences as a medical orderly and soldier on the Salonika front, and is peppered with personal and unexpected details. The chapel is dominated by the Resurrection scene behind the altar, in which dead soldiers carry the white wooden crosses that marked their graves to Christ. The paintings took six years to complete.
Sandham Memorial Chapel contains a visionary mural cycle painted by Stanley Spencer (1891-1959) to commemorate the 'forgotten dead' of the First World War. Inspired by Spencer’s own experiences as a medical orderly and soldier on the Salonika front, the series has been widely recognised as one of the greatest war memorials of the twentieth century, and Spencer's finest achievement.
