LONDON’S STATUES

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 340, 28 April 1928, Page 10

LONDON’S STATUES

WHO IS TO SCRUB THEM? MANY ARE ORPHANS The old question of the responsibility for the washing of London’s statues has come up again, this time in connection with the statue at Queen Elizabeth in the porch of St. Dunstan’s-in-the-West, Fleet Street. Of the.2oo statues of men and the 15 statues of women in the London area, this is the only statue of England’s great Queen. Once it adorned the old Ludgate at the foot of Ludgate Hill, and, since it was carved from white marble, it was presumably once white. Ever since it was removed to St. Dunstan’s, however, it has been jet black. The London County Council, the Office of Works and the City Corporation alike disclaim responsibility is true that the weather this winter has been giving a daily dousing to all the outdoor statues in London, but this apparently is far from enough for Queen Elizabeth.

The same question has occurred before in connection with the statue of William Pitt in Hanover Square. Nobody seems to know whether the County Council, the Office of Works or the descendants of Pitt are the responsible persons. The same question might also be asked concerning Milton in St. Giles’s churchyard, Cripplegate. He was pure and white when he was put up in 1904, mt in 1928 he is streaked with rich I,ondon browns and blacks. Who washes him? The statue of Sir Henry irving behind the National Gallery has also achieved notoriety for its dirt. In fact, it was once the subject of a question in the House of Commons, and the Office of Works replied that the reason some London statues were clean was that they belonged :.o the Office of Works, the dirty ones presumably being those abandoned to the tender mercies of the London County Council and the borough councils. In this case the Irving statue is believed to he either under the L.C.C. or the Westminster Council, while the Nurse Cavell statue near by, the shiniest and cleanest statue in all of outdoor London, is known to be under the Office of Works. It is apparently true that there are statues here and there in I.jndon whose ownership is difficult to trace and for whose upkeep nobody seems to be responsible. The best known statues in outdoor Loudon are under the care of the Office of Works, which took them over under the Public Statues Act of 1854, with a list of those for which it would in the future he responsible. The Act also provided that the owners of any statues not included in the list could transfer them to the Office of Works with the consent of the Treasury, and that for the future no public statue could be erected without the consent of the Office of Works.

Only 15 statues were in the original list, but the Office of Works is now responsible for about 50 statues in London alone, among them being those in Parliament Square and Trafalgar Square (including Nelson’s Column) and the Duke of York’s Column, to whose cost every soldier in the British Army contributed before its completion in 1834. The L.C.C. is responsible for most of the memorials along the Embankment, including Cleopatra’s Needle and the Belgian group. It is also responsible for the Gladstone statue in the Strand. T)he Victoria Memorial in front of Buckingham Palace is under the Office of Works, and so is the statue of William 111. in St. James’s Square, whose ownership remained doubtful until the residents around the square took the matter into their own hands and asked the Office of Works to take charge of it. ■iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimiiiiiiiiig -