Making the invisible visible

It is located at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire. But its very bones - the megaliths of Portland Stone which make up its walls - were quarried here in Dorset.

And too many of the nearly 16,000 names engraved upon it - culled from more than six million documents and records - are also from the county.

Men and women who died in Korea and Aden, the Falklands and Northern Ireland and Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan are remembered upon the finest-quality stone, which was inspected by the Queen and Prince Philip and the memorial's patron, Prince Charles.

When the £1 million contract to supply the slabs was awarded to Albion Stone Quarries, its managing director Michael Poultney said: "At Albion we have become accustomed to working on important buildings and memorials with tight deadlines and demanding specification, but the Armed Forces Memorial is something quite different."

However, it maintains an important link to the Cenotaph, the focus of the annual act of Remembrance of the dead of the two World Wars, which was also made from stone quarried on the Isle of Portland.

The memorial was designed by architect Liam O'Connor, who spent time with service personnel on Army and Navy exercises to get closer to his subject. From the air it resembles a broken circle, comprising two huge, curved walls enclosing two parallel walls and an obelisk. It is designed so that at 11am on each November 11 a shaft of light will shine through to the central area, which consists of a low slab decorated with a bronze wreath. Either side of the wreath area are two sets of statues, cast to depict the grief of widows and orphans at the return of the body of a loved one.

Perhaps most poignantly of all, one of the walls has been left blank, to accommodate the names of those who die in the future while serving their country.

For those who have not lost a loved one, the Armed Services hope it will help re-focus public attention on their sacrifice: "Making the invisible visible", as the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams put it during the dedication service.

David Harris, spokesman for the Army in the South West said the memorial will be welcomed by families from every branch of the armed services. "It's an important addition to the memorials we already have in Britain, to remember those who died while on duty because it is somewhere people can go to remember if they want to. It is a formal recognition of the sacrifice made by service personnel."

Bournemouth woman Heather Loftus, whose partner, Lance Corporal Adam Alders, is serving with the Army in Afghanistan, attached to the Royal Marines, told the Daily Echo: "It's about time we had something like this in this country. Too many of the soldiers think they are just forgotten and no one appreciates what they are doing. This will help that to change."

16,000 names carved on Portland stone