Statues in London

LondonLife – John Keats at Moorgate…

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The new sculpture of John Keats with Lord Mayor of the City of London, Michael Mainelli.. PICTURE: Courtesy of the City of London Corporation.

A new sculpture of Romantic poet John Keats has been unveiled near his birthplace in Moorgate to mark the 229th anniversary of his birth.

The work of British artist Martin Jennings, the sculpture is a bronze cast of an enlarged life mask of Keats which was made when he was 21 (he died just four years later of consumption in 1821).

A plaster cast of the life mask is owned by Keats House, in Hampstead, and it was scanned and digitally enlarged as the basis for the sculpture which is mounted on a stone plinth. The plinth in turn is set in a circular slate base inscribed with some words from the Keat’s Ode on Idolence.

The new statue, which was unveiled last Thursday, was funded by former City of London Corporation Alderman, Bob Hall, who has donated it to the City of London Corporation. Hall has previously funded a statue of poet John Donne – the work of Nigel Boonham – which sits outside St Paul’s Cathedral.

Keats was son of an ostler at an inn and livery stable called The Swan and Hoop, which stood not far from the modern-day Moorgate station.

10 London memorials commemorating foreign leaders – 7. Mahatma Gandhi…

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PICTURE: Alvesgaspar (licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0)

There’s a couple of statues commemorating Mahatma Gandhi in London with the most recent one was unveiled in Parliament Square in 2015.

But this week we head Bloomsbury where we find an older one in the centre of the gardens in Tavistock Square.

The work of Fredda Brilliant, it was unveiled by then Prime Minister Harold Wilson in May, 1968. Also present was the first High Commissioner of India to the UK after independence, VK Krishna Menon, and the then-current High Commissioner of India to the United Kingdom, Shanti Swaroop Dhavan.

Menon apparently chose the location for the statue – Gandhi had studied at the nearby University College London between 1888 and 1891.

Gandhi, who was assassinated in 1948 after having playing an instrumental role in the push for India’s independence, is depicted sitting in a cross-legged in the lotus position wearing a loincloth with a shawl over his right shoulder. The statue sits atop a rounded Portland stone plinth.

The memorial was erected by the Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Committee, with the support of the India League. It was Grade II-listed in 1974.

A further plaque was added beneath the statue in 1996 commemorating the 125th anniversary of the birth of Gandhi.

10 (lesser known) memorials to women in London – 2. Margaret Ethel MacDonald…

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Located on the north side of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, this rather elaborate monument commemorates Margaret Ethel MacDonald (1870-1911), wife of the first British Labour Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald, a noted feminist and social activist.

The Grade II-listed monument, which was unveiled in December, 1914 – three years after her death (which occurred before her husband became PM), stands not far from the flat where she lived with her husband and their children at Number 3.

It features a granite seat atop which is a bronze group of sculptures of nine children gathered around the kneeling MacDonald – the work of Richard Goulden. At the top of the seat – just below the sculptures, is a dedication to MacDonald “who spent her life in helping others”.

On the rear is a plaque containing biographical details and further dedication ending with the words that she “took no rest from doing good”.

PICTURE: mapa mundi (licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0)