The war memorial in Horndean, Hampshire, had something missing. The lamp on top of it just did not match up to what was needed.

The monument was dedicated in 1920 when it was unveiled by Lady Drury-Lowe. Then it was topped by a 2m tall statue of the Goddess of Victory, Nike. In 1964 a car hit the monument and the statue was damaged beyond repair and was replaced by the lamp.

Lately Horndean Parish Council wanted to replace the lamp with another statue. It contacted East Riding stone specialist J Rotherham .

The first stage was for

J Rotherham sculptor Jose Sarabia to produce a scale maquette. Once it had received approval by the council and villagers of Horndean, Rotherham acquired the block of Portland stone from which the goddess would be carved.

The clay model was scanned using 3D laser technology, digitised and scaled up to the required size to be produced by the company’s seven-axes robot.

It then went to the carving workshop where Jose Sarabia and another of J Rotherham’s sculptors, Paul Sandilands, added the finishing touches to bring the sculpture to life.

The 2m high Nike has been carefully craned on to her new vantage point in Horndean Village Square, restoring the memorial to its original condition for the first time in almost 50 years. Since the memorial was first erected the names of the Second World War casualties and one from Afghanistan have been added, giving it a total of 115 names.

The memorial was re-dedicated at a ceremony attended by more than 700 people.