Anglo-Boer War Memorial

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.BackgroundSoon 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 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 finalised.