ANIMAL STATUES IN LONDON 7
Animal Statues in London 7
Cannizaro Park, Wimbledon
Diana with Fawn is a grade II listed marble statue crafted in 1843. Cannizaro House, which stands in this delightful park, was once a World War I convalescent hospital, then a home for the elderly. Now it is a swanky hotel popular with tennis stars for two weeks (or less) every summer.
Kensington Gardens
Located just inside the Palace Gate, this small bronze figure of a terrier is a memorial to the actor Esme Percy.
Fulham
Statues of rams can often be seen adorning Young's pubs. Confusingly, this one is in front of The Cock which doesn't have a statue of a cock but once had a large one on the roof.
Fleet Street
Ye Olde Cock Tavern in Fleet Street makes more sense. Plus there's a chicken weather vane - which is surely not functional in that location and probably didn't survive the Great Fire of London in 1666. Ye Olde Cock supposedly has London's narrowest pub frontage. And it doesn't get much wider inside.
Acton
There are around 25 Red Lion pubs in London. But I'm not going round all of them (yet) to look for statues of lions. Similarly, I won't be searching for cocks, the emblem of Courage pubs.
However, I already had the Red Lion and Pineapple in my portfolio as it's a Wetherspoons. Click here for more about this pub. And, having heard its lions were impressive, I did actually make the effort to visit the Red Lion in Barnes which also happens to be the bus stop for the London Wetlands Centre .....
Barnes
The charming 'Red Lyon' in Barnes was a pub in the early 1700s. It burnt down in 1836 and was replaced by the current building. Apparently lions can be seen on many houses in Barnes because, we're led to believe, a local builder once ordered 100 of them and 1000 were delivered in error.
The statues of two swans with ornithologist Peter Scott is at the entrance to the London Wetlands Centre, which he founded. Peter Scott was the only son of Robert Falcon Scott who was rather better known (unless you are Norwegian) than Roald Amundsen who beat him to the South Pole after making the wise decision to use dogs not horses.
Putney Bridge
This appears to be a statue of a man holding a swan. It is on the side of an office block on the north side of the bridge. That's all I know!
Nearby is Fulham Palace where you can find another Great Tree of London ....
It is quite difficult to photograph the 500-year-old Holm Oak as the multi-trunked tree spreadeagles amongst other large trees. Possibly dating from 1495, when the palace was built, it is the oldest holm oak in London, and perhaps in the UK.
Lincoln's Inn Fields
Two lions guard the entrance of what was once the Land Registry Office, now part of the London School of Economics.
Chancery Lane
On the railings of the Law Society stand 13 golden lions. They were made to an 1852 design by Alfred Stevens. Four are originals which were originally created by Stevens for the gates of the British Museum.
Fleet Street
The double-headed eagle outside C. Hoare & Co is an iconographic symbol originating in the bronze age.
Founded in 1672 by Sir Richard Hoare, Hoares is the oldest privately-owned bank in the UK. The banks clientele has included many high-profile individuals including Samuel Pepys and Jane Austen. It is currently owned by eight of the twelfth generation of Sir Richard's descendants.
Devonshire Square, Houndsditch
Whilst hunting (unsuccessfully) for a hound in Houndsditch I found this splendid cnihtengild statue. What looks impossible to pronounce translates as the Knighten Guilde which was a Medieval order of chivalry founded by Saxon king Edgar the Peaceful for his loyal knights.
Denys Mitchell's work, completed in 1990, is unusual as it wasn't cast from a mould but constructed from beaten bronze. The horse's coat includes embedded blue glass. The sculpture stands in a small garden in Devonshire Square. Before 2017 it was hidden in a courtyard, standing on a turntable that moved one degree per day.
Incidentally, Houndsditch follows the route of the old city ditch which was where dead dogs were once, er, ditched.
I later discovered the hound I was searching for no longer exists .....
This bench was placed in Victoria Garden in 2018. It was created by Patrick McEvoy with a plaque that read: 'Here lies Geoffrey Barkington of Houndsditch, 10th December 2003 to 16th September 2017, aged 98 dog years. May he rest in peace' - despite the fact that Geoffrey the dachshund was still very much alive at the time. When the park was renovated in 2024, the bench was recycled, by which time I'd hazard a guess Geoffrey had suffered a similar fate. Shame, on both counts.
This weird casket with its protruding lion's head and feet is the grave of Sir William Rawlins, 1801 Sheriff of London, founder of the Eagle Insurance Company, upholsterer and convicted electoral fraudster. Rawlins had a hand in designing the casket.
Martyrdom of St Pancras by a Lion is a bit odd as Pancras was actually a fourteen-year-old Roman who was beheaded for converting to Christianity in around 304AD.
Alexandra Park
Leo the Lion stands beside the lake in the northwest corner of Alexandra Palace Park. Sculptured by Charles Wheeler in 1973, it was to be at the entrance of a children's zoo that never materialised.
The large wooden simian is nearby at the entrance to Go Ape!
Bloomsbury
I don't normally bother with coats of arms which are numerous and typically consist of a shield supported by lions and unicorns rampant (on hind legs). But this one - on the steeple of St George's Church - the lion is the other sort of rampant as it attacks the unicorn.
The Undercroft of St George's is home to The Museum of Comedy. It is actually a comedy club rather than a museum although some interesting comedic memorabilia to be seen in the foyer/bar area.
Buxton Street, Shoreditch
The Ram and Magpie statue can be found in the Allen Gardens Playground. Carved on-site from a block of stone, it was inspired by a pub of the same name which stood on this site in the early 20th century. It's not clear from this photo which bit is the magpie. But it stands in a gated area which can only be viewed from this angle.
Aldgate
The Aldgate Pump is a former drinking fountain where the water once flowed from the wolf's jaws. A well with fresh drinking water had stood on this site since the 13th century. It was connected to the mains supply in 1876 when the old well was found to be contaminated. The wolf is said to refer to the last wolf shot in the City of London.
Is this large fibre glass mutt a sculpture? ChatGPT couldn't shed any light. Anyhow, kids love clambering on it.
Regent's Park Zoo
I was here to photograph real animals which requires more patience than statues but can be more rewarding (see London Zoo in pictures). However, there are almost as many animal sculptures in the zoo as the real thing. So .....
You can't miss Guy the Gorilla just inside the main entrance. Larger than life size, the statue remembers London Zoo's most famous inmate. Baby Guy arrived on Guy Fawkes Day, 1941. He died of a heart attack in 1978 after having a tooth extracted. Gorillas still remain the star attractions here .....
This statue is of Lieutenant Harry Colebourn and his pet black bear Winnie. British-born Colebourn was in the Royal Canadian Army Veterinary Corps. On his way across Canada to serve in World War I he found an orphaned bear cub and called it Winnie after his home town of Winnipeg.
Unable to take Winnie to the battlefields of France, Colebourn left the bear in the care of London Zoo for safekeeping. After the war he decided it would be best for her to live there indefinitely. Following a visit to the zoo with his son Christopher Robin, A A Milne was inspired to create Winnie the Pooh.
There is a second sculpture of Winnie at the zoo ....
Ambika Paul (above) was diagnosed with leukaemia at the age of two. Her parents brought her from Calcutta to London for the best treatment available at the time. For the next two years every effort was made to save Ambika. But she died, aged four, in 1968. During her short life, Ambika's parents brought her to the zoo, which she loved, many times. After her death her parents decided to make their home in England, building up the Caparo Group of companies over the next 25 years. In 1992, when London Zoo was threatened with closure, the Paul family donated one million pounds to fund a children's zoo and the Ambika Paul Memorial Gardens.
More statues ....
This large penguin is made entirely of empty plastic bottles.
Dung Beetles by Wendy Taylor. When it comes to statues, this is the biggest piece of s*** I've come across.
Paternoster Square
Animal sculptors Gillie and Marc continue their campaign to save endangered species with one of their most ambitious projects to date.
York
I've gone a little off-piste here but couldn't ignore these on a recent visit to this historic city. These were two of fifty wild animal statues on Tommy Treebark's Wild Adventure Trail which ran in York City Centre in the summer of 2025.
Comments
Post a Comment