The Rajah’s personal memorial was designed by a Mr.Denis Santry of Messrs.Swan & Maclaren, Architects Singapore, who later also designed several public building in Sarawak, including the present General Post Office. It is in the form of a granite obelisk about twenty feet high with a bronze panel sunk into the stone on each corner on which are raised figures of a Malay, a Dayak, a Chinese and Kayan. On the front side which faces the Astana, there is a bas relief of Sir Charles Brooke in marble, while below on a bronze tablet ia an inscription giving the principal dates of his life and reign. Above are the old Crest and Arms of Sarawak. When Sir Charles Brooke, second Rajah of Sarawak, died in May 1917, just one month short o his 88th birthday, he had devoted sixty-five years of his life to the peoples of Sarawak- forty-nine of them as Rajah. In appreciation of this great service to the State, it was decided that a fund should be raised for the purpose of erecting some form of lasting personal memorial to him in this country. This was largely because although the old Rajah had often expressed a wish to be buried in Sarawak, fate decreed otherwise since he died in England during the First World War. Despite the fact that his body was embalmed and placed in a vault which the intention of sending it to Sarawak for interment as soon as the opportunity arose, after a wait of just over two years, it was finally decided to lay him to rest beside his uncle, the first Rajah, in the little country churchyard of Sheepstor, Devon.
