Cavalry of the Empire Memorial
If you’ve ever enjoyed a morning stroll along the Serpentine Road in Hyde Park, you might have paused in front of a striking bronze monument: a medieval knight on horseback, sword raised high, triumphantly pinning a vanquished dragon to the earth. This is the 'Cavalry of the Empire Memorial'. While it looks like a timeless piece of romantic folklore, its origins are deeply tied to the brutal reality of twentieth-century warfare, political architecture battles, and a changing London landscape. Here is the story behind this hidden-in-plain-sight London landmark. Born from the Ashes of the Great War By 1919, the world had changed forever. The First World War had introduced industrialised slaughter, with machine guns, barbed wire, and poison gas, leaving the traditional military role of horse-mounted cavalry largely sidelined and obsolete on the Western Front.
