The Honoured Dead Memorial is a provincial heritage site in Kimberley situated at the meeting point of five roads.
This beautiful one of a kind structure is often used as an assembly point for groups, whether it be for a circle of prayer or for fun activities.
This monument commemorates those who died defending the city during the Siege of Kimberley in the Anglo-Boer War, which took place from 1899 until 1902. It is the tomb of 27 soldiers.
Sir Herbert Baker, the well-known architect, was commissioned by Cecil John Rhodes to design and build the monument. He was sent to Greece to study historic monuments.
The monument is built of sandstone quarried in the Matopo Hills in Zimbabwe, where Rhodes was subsequently interred.
It features an inscription that Rhodes specifically commissioned Rudyard Kipling to write: “This for a charge to our children in sign of the price we paid. The price that we paid for freedom that comes unsoiled to your hand. Read, revere and uncover, here are the victors laid. They that died for their city being son’s of the land.”
The Long Cecil gun that was designed and manufactured by George Frederick Labram in the workshops of De Beers during the siege, is mounted on its stylobate. It is surrounded by shells from the Boer Long Tom. The memorial was dedicated on 28 November 1904 (after Rhodes has died).
