Charles George Gordon - Memorials

Memorials

News of Gordon's death led to an "unprecedented wave of public grief across Britain". A memorial service, conducted by the Bishop of Newcastle, was held at St. Paul's Cathedral on 14 March. The Lord Mayor of London opened a public subscription to raise funds for a permanent memorial to Gordon; this eventually materialised as the Gordon Boys Home, now Gordon's School in West End, Woking.

Statues were erected in Trafalgar Square, London, in Chatham, Gravesend, Melbourne and Khartoum. Southampton, where Gordon had stayed with his sister, Augusta, in Rockstone Place prior to his departure to the Sudan, erected a memorial in Porter's Mead, now Queen's Park, near the town's docks. On 16 October 1885, the "light and elegant structure" was unveiled; it comprises a stone base on which there are four polished red Aberdeen granite columns, about twenty feet high. The columns are surmounted by carved capitals supporting a cross. The pedestal bears the arms of the Gordon clan and of the borough of Southampton, and also Gordon’s name in Chinese. Around the base is an inscription referring to Gordon as a soldier, philanthropist and administrator; the inscription mentions those parts of the world in which he served, and closes with a quotation from his last letter to his sisters: — "I am quite happy, thank God! and, like Lawrence, I have tried to do my duty." The memorial is a Grade II listed building.

Gordon Lodge, close to Queen Victoria's Osborne House on the Isle of Wight, was demolished in the 1980s to be replaced by a retirement complex of the same name.

Gordon's memory (as well as his work in supervising the town's riverside fortifications) is commemorated in Gravesend; the embankment of the Riverside Leisure Area is known as the Gordon Promenade, while Khartoum Place lies just to the south. Located in the town centre of his birthplace of Woolwich is General Gordon Square, while one of the first Woolwich Free Ferry vessels was named Gordon in his memory.

In 1888 a statue of Gordon by Hamo Thornycroft was erected in Trafalgar Square, London, exactly halfway between the two fountains. It was removed in 1943. In a House of Commons speech on 5 May 1948, then opposition leader Winston Churchill spoke out in favour of the statue's return to its original location: “Is the right honourable Gentleman (the Minister of Works) aware that General Gordon was not only a military commander, who gave his life for his country, but, in addition, was considered very widely throughout this country as a model of a Christian hero, and that very many cherished ideals are associated with his name? Would not the right honourable Gentleman consider whether this statue might not receive special consideration ? General Gordon was a figure outside and above the ranks of military and naval commanders.” However, in 1953 the statue minus a large slice of its pedestal was reinstalled on the Victoria Embankment, in front of the newly built Ministry of Defence. An identical statue by Thornycroft – but with the pedestal intact – is located in a small park called Gordon Reserve, near Parliament House in Melbourne, Australia (a statue of the unrelated poet, Adam Lindsay Gordon, lies in the same reserve). Funded by donations from 100,000 citizens, it was unveiled in 1889.

The Corps of Royal Engineers, Gordon's own Corps, commissioned a statue of Gordon on a camel. It was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1890 and then erected in Brompton Barracks, Chatham, the home of the Royal School of Military Engineering, where it still stands. Much later a second casting was made. In 1902 it was placed at the junction of St Martin's Lane and Charing Cross Road in London. In 1904 it was moved to Khartoum, where it stood at the intersection of Gordon Avenue and Victoria Avenue, 200 metres south of the new palace that had been built in 1899. It was removed in 1958, shortly after the Sudan became independent. This is the figure which, since 1960, stands at the Gordon's School in Woking. The Royal Engineers Museum adjoining the barracks has many artefacts relating to Gordon including personal possessions. There are also memorials to Gordon in the nearby Rochester Cathedral.

A statue of General Gordon can be found in Aberdeen outside the main gates of The Robert Gordon University.

In St Paul's Cathedral, London, a slightly larger than life-size effigy of Gordon is flanked by a relief commemorating general Herbert Stewart (1843–1885), who had commanded the "flying column" of camel-borne troops, and who was mortally wounded on 19 January 1885. Stewart's grave can still be found at the Jakdul Wells in the Bayuda Desert. The commander of the Khartoum Relief Expedition 1884-1885, Sir Garnet Wolseley, lies buried beneath the effigies of Gordon and Stewart in the crypt of St Paul's.

There is a bust of Gordon in Westminster Abbey, just to the left of the main entrance when entering the building, above a doorway.

A rather fine stained-glass portrait is to be found on the main stairs of the Booloominbah building at the University of New England, in Armidale, New South Wales, Australia.

The Fairey Gordon Bomber, designed to act as part of the RAF's colonial 'aerial police force' in the Imperial territories that he helped conquer (India and North Africa), was named in his honour.

The City of Geelong, Australia, created a memorial in the form of the Gordon Technical College, which was later renamed the Gordon Institute of Technology. Part of the Institute continues under the name Gordon Institute of TAFE and the remainder was amalgamated with the Geelong State College to become Deakin University.

The suburbs of Gordon in northern Sydney and Gordon Park in northern Brisbane were named after General Gordon, as was the former Shire of Gordon in Victoria, Australia.

An elementary school in Vancouver, British Columbia, is named after General Gordon. Gordon Memorial College is a school in Khartoum. A grammar school in Medway, Kent, England, called Sir Joseph Williamson's Mathematical School, has a house named in honour of Charles George Gordon, called Gordon.

In Gloucester, there is a rugby union club called Gordon League which was formed in 1888 by Agnes Jane Waddy. The club plays in Western Counties North. The Gordon League Fishing Club uses the rugby club as it home. Gordon's Boys' Clubs were organised after General Gordon's death and the Gloucester Gordon League may be the last remaining example.

The Church Missionary Society (CMS) work in Sudan was undertaken under the name of the Gordon Memorial Mission. This was a very evangelical branch of CMS and was able to start work in Sudan in 1900 as soon as the Anglo-Eygyptian Condominium took control after the fall of Khartoum in 1899. In 1885 at a meeting in London, £3,000 were allocated to a Gordon Memorial Mission in Sudan.

In Khartoum, there is a small shrine to Gordon in the back of Republican Palace Museum. The museum was previously the city's largest Anglican Church, and is now dedicated primarily to gifts to Sudanese Heads of State. In the rear corner, there is a plaque commemorating those who fell with Gordon during the siege. Above is an encomium in brass letters, most of which have long since fallen off the wall leaving only silhouettes. It reads "Charles George Gordan, Servant of Jesus Christ, Whose Labour Was Not in Vain with the Lord".

In the Presidential Palace in Khartoum (built in 1899), in the west wing on the ground floor, there is (or at least used to be) a stone slab against the wall on left side of the main corridor when coming from the main entrance with the text: "Charles George Gordon died - 26 Jan 1885", on the spot where Gordon was killed, at the foot of the stairs in the old Governor-General's Palace (built around 1850).