Author: susandocher

Greta Thunberg

(2003 – )

West Downs Centre, Winchester

I feel I’m rushing around.  I’ve got a 5-hour drive home this afternoon so find myself just stopping momentarily at places.  On visiting new spots I’m not sure what parking protocol is and my concern about being somewhere I shouldn’t be plays on my mind.  This is how it is when I pull up to Greta Thunberg outside Winchester University’s West Downs Centre.  It is a Sunday so manage to pull up close outside the building, but I’m worried about getting a parking ticket.  I just need 5 mins.  Not long enough to fully take in the artwork, circle round it deep in thought, and view from all angles, but long enough to visit, take some snaps and go.

Greta’s statue is rare in the fact it has been created when the subject is still very much alive and active.  You can imagine no council wants to fork out thousands of pounds for the protagonist to disgrace themself months after the installation.  It’s hard to picture Greta in a bar room brawl or staggering out of a nightclub with powder around her nose at 4 in the morning, but who knows when she has so much life ahead of her? 

I’m learning along the way here, not just about who these women are and how to steer myself across the UK, but how statues come about.  Margaret Thatcher’s Grantham statue came in at the tune of £300,000 so it is not a decision given lightly.  The bigger the statue, invariably, the higher the price tag.  Materials aren’t free.  Time and precision is not free.  Nor is the installation and subsequent upkeep costs.  Captured lifesize as her younger self and at a cost of £24,000 it weighs in considerably cheaper than other monuments and yet evoked criticism and anti-social behaviour.   Sadly, the statue was moved in 2024 to the University’s courtyard garden and now stands with her back to a glass wall, which, as the artist points out, makes it less accessible as an art piece, with the opportunity missed of walking round the whole piece as art intended.

Charlotte Mary Yonge

(1823-1901)

Eastleigh Train Station

Another weekend, another visit.  This time to Hampshire where I can visit friends as well as family.  I’m packing a lot in this summer.  While work occupies me during the week, my boys are away so filling my weekends up with my statue pursuits is a much needed distraction.

On the road back to Leeds I can take in three women.  There’s an ongoing rail dispute which isn’t to be resolved until much later.  Ironically, the first visit is to Charlotte Mary Yonge who was an important benefactor to the immigrant workers and their families that arrived in Eastleigh to toil in the railway industry.   It doesn’t seem much to ask that people are paid fairly and kept safe while doing their jobs.  To think the struggle has continued through generations is disheartening to say the least. 

On this occasion, having a car and being able to do a quick pit stop between the models has proved useful.  Due to said strike, I can rock up at Eastleigh train station and there is room in the car park.  At the station a few people walk into the forecourt and walk out again looking dazed and confused, somehow missing the strike information.  This means I have the statue to myself.

Situated outside the station, taking a seat on a bench with room for company, sits local author and teacher Yonge who gave Eastleigh its name.  I love the invitation to sit awhile with a local public figure.  Statues all too often feel unrelatable and intangible.  Having a bench is an opportunity to look up close at artwork and almost be at one with it.  It is a style that has really taken off, if statues have a fashion….

Margaret Thatcher

1925-2013

St Peter’s Hill Green, Grantham

I rope another friend in to a statue visit.  This one is in Grantham which happens to be the birthplace of this particular lady (the statue, not Louise…)

We have entered the height of summer and the day starts with a bright blue sky. Perfect photography weather.  Louise and I arrive early in the town.  Embarrassed to ask for directions for this particular visit, Louise kindly steps in to find the way and we walk down the road past Sir Issac Newton’s monument to find the statue on St Peter’s Hill Green.  High on a plinth stands Margaret Thatcher, aka, ‘The Iron Lady’ who became, in 1979, the first female prime minister in Europe.  A controversial figure (and still to this day – don’t get me started on milk in schools!) She is pictured in the full ceremonial robes worn by the members of the House of Lords.   Her elevated position is something I feel Thatcher would have approved of.  Controversially, the statue was rejected for installation in Parliament Square at a risk of statue saturation/protest/vandalism (pick your story) so subsequently took its place here in May 2022 where reportedly it was egged within hours of its unveiling.

We visit on a peaceful day and I love that I captured Louise in the background of the shots, whether she wanted to be or not….

Florence Nightingale

(1820 – 1910)

Waterloo Place, St James’s, London SW1Y

Social Reformer, Statistician and Founder of Modern Medicine

This is the first but certainly not the last tribute to Florence Nightingale.  She stands at Waterloo Place – a short walk from the Stafford but up so high I’m struggling to take a decent shot.  Created by Arthur George Walker, it shows her as ‘the Lady with the Lamp’, a nickname she earned on her nightly inspection rounds in the hospitals of the Crimean war and was unveiled in the midst of the First World War in 1915, with little fanfare, as was appropriate given wartime.

Nancy Wake

(1912-2011)

Stafford Hotel, St James’s Place, London SW1A

We’ve come across Karen Newman’s work before and will see it again.  Yesterday’s Anayat Noor Khan bust and later Special Agent Violet Szabo.  Today it is Nancy Wake hidden to the side of a bar.  I feel conscious that my casual wear signals that I’m not staying in the hotel as I approach the doorman at the Stafford Hotel, but I’m permitted in and start searching.  I find her in the corner and take in the similarity of Newman’s Khan bust, partly because Wake (and indeed Szabo) are of the same era.  In the World War 2 she joined the French Resistance and later the Special Operations Executive where she undertook several dangerous missions in the lead up to D-Day on 6th June 1944.

The American Bar at the Stafford was frequented by Wake where she would enjoy a tipple of gin and tonic and had a reserved bar stool.  In her honour, the bar makes a cocktail named, ‘White Mouse’ – the name given to her by the Gestapo because of her ability to evade capture.

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Twiggy

(1949 – )

Bourdon Place, Mayfair, London SW1

I’m staying in the nation’s capital and determined to get some more statue sightseeing done.  I can travel easily around London so whilst here I want to get in as many as I can.  I’m giving myself a year to see all 128 statues so the city gives me a chance to get ahead of myself – or so I think.

Standing in Bourdon Place, is the model Twiggy.  Born Lesley Lawson but better known by her nickname, she is often touted as the first supermodel and was iconic in the 60’s fashion industry and beyond.  She also has an acting and singing career as well as being an ardent animal rights campaigner.  But Twiggy is not the only sculpture here.  The street holds the photographer Terence Donovan plus an onlooker, thus allowing you to gaze at the model through the photographer’s eyes, but also the shopper passing by. 

You can also stand with Twiggy and take in her view.  It’s a lovely concept, allowing you to flit between the pieces of art, each one giving a different angle to the next.  It is part of the Mayfair Sculpture Trail, https://www.bondstreet.co.uk/art-in-mayfair

with artist Neal French http://www.nealfrench.co.uk/ entitling the work as ‘Three Figures’ in 2012.

Noor Inayat Khan

1914-1944
Gordon Square, London

Initially employed as the first female wireless operator in the war efforts, Khan was subsequently recruited as a Special Operations Executive (SOE) and was sent to occupied France 1943.  In October of that year she was betrayed by a Frenchwoman and arrested by the Gestapo.  She was sent to Germany’s Pforzheim prison and was kept in chains in solitary confinement. 

In September 1944 Khan and three other female SOE agents were transferred to Dachau concentration camp and subsequently executed on 13th September, with her last word being, ‘Liberte’.

As I take in the sculpture, a man opens up with information on Khan, what she stood for, and how, as a woman of colour she is rare, particularly in art.  He also says there is a film to be made about her life.  I’m pleased someone is showing an interest.  As I walk away I notice he has a cat on a lead.  Now I don’t know what to believe anymore.

The bust was unveiled in 2012. 

Sculptor Karen Newman. http://www.karen-newman.com/

Vera Brittain

(1893-1970)

Brampton Park, Newcastle Under Lyme, Staffordshire

It is 8th August – high summer – but there is an air of autumn in the park where this statue is set, as if the trees and plants have had enough of dry hot days and have begun to shed the odd leaf in preparation for darker days.

Vera Brittain was born in Newcastle Under Lyme.  She began English Literature studies at Oxford but as the First World War broke out she signed up as a Voluntary Aid Detachment.  Affected by the loss of loved ones during this time she became involved in the pacifist movement and her writing reflected her thoughts on the futility and tragedy of war.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/vera-mary-brittain

Is this a statue of Vera Brittain?  The nurse on the bench is a memorial to all women who lost loved ones in war but it is a fitting tribute to Brittain and beautifully crafted.

The statue, together with Brittain’s prose on the paving, captures the essence of suffering.  The downward sorrowful gaze of the figure looks down at the note,’The King commands me to assure you of the true sympathy of His Majesty and The Queen in your sorrow’.

The paving reads:-

‘I sat in a tree-shadowed walk called The Brampton and mediated on the War. 

It was one of those shimmering autumn days when every leaf and flower seemed to scintillate with light, and I found it very hard to believe that not far away men were being slain ruthlessly….

It is impossible, I concluded, to find any satisfaction in the thought of the destruction of men, whether they be English, French, German or anything else, seems a crime to the whole march of civilisation.’

Vera Brittain, 1914, from Testament of Youth, 1933.

The park is lovely.  It holds a Museum, Shop and Café and a retro 1987 toilets!  But make sure you rest, and take a seat with the Lady in the Park.

Sculptor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Edwards_(sculptor)

Virginia Woolf

1882-1941

Bust – Tavistock Square, London WC1H

Statue and bench – Richmond Riverside TW9

“For most of history, Anonymous was a woman”

Woolf is a writer best known for works such as Mrs Dalloway (1925), To The Lighthouse (1927), Orlando (1928) and A Room of One’s Own (1929). 

The sculpture sits on Richmond Riverside.  Woolf was troubled with mental illness for much of her life, leading to her suicide by drowning in the river Ouse, but the sculptor Laury Dizengremel has captured her in happier times and from accounts she enjoyed her time in Richmond where, with her husband, she founded the publishing house Hogarth Press.

The bust in Tavistock Square is cast from a 1931 sculpture by Stephen Tomlin (1901–1937). Unveiled in 2004 it sits in the square where Woolf lived (at number 52) between 1924 and 1939 continuing to write and run Hogarth Press.

Dame Louisa Brandreth Aldrich-Blake

(1865 – 1925)

Tavistock Square, London WC1H

“The path of the just is as the shining light”

Fourth statue out of 128 and still on day one, I’m already starting to feel a little overwhelmed by the task of visiting more statues, as dates, professions and skills are already mingling in my mind.

Born in Chingford, Essex,  Louisa would go on to be one of the first British women to enter the world of modern medicine and the first to obtain the degree of Master of Surgery.

Public Statues and Sculptures Association website tells us she was also a skilled boxer and cricketer https://pssauk.org/woman/test/ so you can imagine her UCAS application form to study medicine made her stand out as a good ‘all rounder’ candidate.

Pioneering in the treatment of cervical and rectal cancers, she later became the very first surgeon of either sex to perform operations for cervical and rectal cancer.  Sadly she was to die of cancer in 1925.

Tavistock Square also hosts a bust of Virgina Woolf – let’s visit her next!

Sculpture Arthur George Walker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_George_Walker

Design by Whitehall Cenotaph creator Edwin Lutyens   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Lutyens