The Honoured Dead Memorial commemorates the British and civilian dead of the Siege of Kimberley in 1899–1900. The monument is large and sober, set in well-maintained gardens, and beside it stands one of the more extraordinary objects in South African military history: Long Cecil, a cannon built from scratch during the siege itself.
With Kimberley under bombardment and short of heavy artillery, the De Beers engineers and workers designed and manufactured their own gun using machinery and metal available on site. The cannon weighs nearly a ton and fired its first shot on New Year's Day 1900. That it was built during a siege, under fire, from improvised materials, is remarkable. It remains on its original carriage and looks exactly like what it is: a lump of ingenuity from a desperate moment.