Stone set in words

DON'T be alarmed if in the coming months you see a tall, imposing man in his fifties clambering over a London statue or prowling around it, staring intently. The chances are that it is Philip Ward- Jackson, doyen of sculpture aficionados, doing his job.

Ward-Jackson, who works at the Cour-tauld Institute of Art, is involved in the most ambitious study of Britain's manmade environment since Sir Nikolaus Pevsner's Buildings of England. Under the aegis of the Public Monuments and Sculpture Association, every public sculpture in Britain is being documented, and the information published in guide books. The project is a kind of Domesday Book for public sculpture.

It is being undertaken at a time when there is unprecedented public interest in sculpture. From Antony Gormley's gigantic Angel of the North, which lords it over the A1 near Gateshead, to the various sculptures that have occupied the empty plinth in Trafalgar Square, new commissions have been capturing people's imagination. Nonetheless, there is still a widespread feeling that most public sculpture is either dull, pompous, imperialist, or just plain silly - a prejudice that was encapsulated in a putdown about such artefacts being mere "turds in the plaza".

While accepting that public sculpture is not always what it might be, Ward-Jackson is adamant that it plays a vital role in our cultural life. "I think of statues with their attributes, pedestal figures and inscriptions as wonderful visual puzzles.

And they never look the same twice: their appearance changes in different light," he says.

It is certainly a labour of love tracing the history of these surprisingly vulnerable confections. Take, for example, what is perhaps the most prominently sited statue in the City, that of Queen Anne which stands in front of the steps to St Paul's Cathedral, flanked by four allegorical figures. Piecing together the troubled and tortuous history of what Ward-Jackson considers a "marvellous" work has required sleuthing on a Sherlock Holmes scale. "It was carved by Francis Bird in 1712, but in the late 18th century it was attacked by a madman who thought she was his mother.

For almost a century it was neglected and became increasingly dilapidated. By the 1870s, however, the Corporation of London and the Dean and Chapter of St Paul's were embarrassed that foreign visitors to the cathedral always passed it by and the sculptor, RC Belt, was brought in to make a replacement."

Belt was commissioned to create a replica by taking casts of what remained and filling in the missing bits. "The original was sold and is now mouldering away in the grounds of a convent near Eastbourne. One big change was made to the new statue. Queen Anne originally held up her sceptre with her arm outstretched in an aggressive, phallic gesture. The arm was lowered to make it less shocking to Victorian sensibilities," says Ward-Jackson.

The ups-and-downs of this monument do not end there. It is highly unlikely that Belt actually made the second version of Queen Anne's statue, says Ward-Jackson. "He was in prison for jewel theft while he was supposed to be working on it, and his assistant Louis Malempre did most of the work."

Recently, however, another thief has been at work. The head of Britannia, one of the allegorical figures on the base of the pedestal, has been stolen.

If anyone knows of its whereabouts, Ward-Jackson would like to know. Indeed, one of the main purposes of the project is to heighten awareness of the parlous state of so many of our monuments.

Very few pre-1670 sculptures survive - both because of the systematic destruction by iconoclasts during the Reformation and the Civil War, and because of the Great Fire of London. If we exclude a Roman boundary marker in the City, the most interesting old sculpture is a stone carving of the mythical King Lud flanked by his sons, Androgeus and Theomanticus, which was made around 1580. It was incorporated into a building in Ludgate, but when that was demolished in the 18th century, the group was transferred to the doorway of the vestry of St Dun-stans-in-the-West in Fleet Street. "It's a fascinating demonstration of what they thought early Englishmen looked like.

They are very hairy, blob-eyed old monsters, with long legs and short skirts."

Quite how this appallingly groomed trio came to preside over the entrance to a vicar's dressing room is anyone's guess - it is tantamount to getting Black Sabbath to play on Songs of Praise. But a sense of surprise and almost surreal incongruity is one of the principal pleasures to be got from public sculptures. At their best, they are a brilliant form of street theatre.

The World as Sculpture, by James Hall, has just been published in paperback (Pimlico, 15).

Copyright 2000
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