Wellington's Column
Encyclopedia
Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington
Field Marshal Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, KG, GCB, GCH, PC, FRS , was an Irish-born British soldier and statesman, and one of the leading military and political figures of the 19th century...
standing on the corner of William Brown Street
William Brown Street
William Brown Street in Liverpool, England is a road that is remarkable for its concentration of public buildings. It is sometimes referred to as the "Cultural Quarter"...
and Lime Street
Lime Street, Liverpool
Lime Street in Liverpool, England was created as a street in 1790. Its most famous feature is Lime Street Station. It is part of the William Brown Street conservation area....
, Liverpool
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
, England. It has been designated by English Heritage
English Heritage
English Heritage . is an executive non-departmental public body of the British Government sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport...
as a Grade II* listed building.
History
After the Duke's death in 1852, in common with other cities, Liverpool decided to erect a monument to celebrate his achievements. A committee was established to organise public subscriptions, but the money was slow to come in. A design competition was set up in 1856 to find a sculptor for the column, and this was won by Andrew Lawson of Edinburgh. There were further delays while a suitable site was found, and in 1861 a second competition, this time for the statue of the Duke, was won by George Anderson LawsonG. A. Lawson
George Anderson Lawson was a Victorian era sculptor who was associated with the New Sculpture movement.Lawson was born in Edinburgh. He studied in Glasgow, and settled in London in 1866. His reputation was established through the creation of statues of distinguished citizens...
, brother of the sculptor. The foundation stone was laid on 1 May 1861 by the Mayor of Liverpool. There were further delays during construction of the monument due to subsidence, and it was finally completed towards the end of 1865. The delays resulted in its being "a very late example of a column-monument for Britain".
Description
The foundations of the monument are in RuncornRuncorn
Runcorn is an industrial town and cargo port within the borough of Halton in the ceremonial county of Cheshire, England. In 2009, its population was estimated to be 61,500. The town is on the southern bank of the River Mersey where the estuary narrows to form Runcorn Gap. Directly to the north...
sandstone
Sandstone
Sandstone is a sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized minerals or rock grains.Most sandstone is composed of quartz and/or feldspar because these are the most common minerals in the Earth's crust. Like sand, sandstone may be any colour, but the most common colours are tan, brown, yellow,...
, the pedestal
Pedestal
Pedestal is a term generally applied to the support of a statue or a vase....
is in granite
Granite
Granite is a common and widely occurring type of intrusive, felsic, igneous rock. Granite usually has a medium- to coarse-grained texture. Occasionally some individual crystals are larger than the groundmass, in which case the texture is known as porphyritic. A granitic rock with a porphyritic...
, and the column itself is in Darley Dale
Darley Dale
Darley Dale, also known simply as Darley, is a town in Derbyshire, England, with a population of around 6,000 people. It lies north of Matlock, on the River Derwent and the A6 road.- History :...
stone. The overall height of the monument is 132 feet (40.2 m), the column being 81 feet (24.7 m) high and the statue 25 feet (7.6 m) high. It stands on a stepped base with a square pedestal. On each side of the pedestal is a bronze plaque; at the corners are bronze eagles joined by swags
Festoon
Festoon , a wreath or garland, and so in architecture a conventional arrangement of flowers, foliage or fruit bound together and suspended by ribbons, either from a decorated knot, or held in the mouths of lions, or suspended across the back of bulls heads as...
along the sides. Standing on the pedestal is a Roman Doric
Doric order
The Doric order was one of the three orders or organizational systems of ancient Greek or classical architecture; the other two canonical orders were the Ionic and the Corinthian.-History:...
fluted
Fluting (architecture)
Fluting in architecture refers to the shallow grooves running vertically along a surface.It typically refers to the grooves running on a column shaft or a pilaster, but need not necessarily be restricted to those two applications...
column. Within the column are 169 steps leading up to a viewing platform. On top of the column is a cylinder surmounted by a cupola
Cupola
In architecture, a cupola is a small, most-often dome-like, structure on top of a building. Often used to provide a lookout or to admit light and air, it usually crowns a larger roof or dome....
on which the bronze statue of the Duke stands. The statue is made from the melted-down bronze from cannons captured at the Battle of Waterloo
Battle of Waterloo
The Battle of Waterloo was fought on Sunday 18 June 1815 near Waterloo in present-day Belgium, then part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands...
. The Duke holds a scroll in his right hand, and his left hand rest on the hilt of his sword.
The brass plaque on the south of the pedestal is a relief
Relief
Relief is a sculptural technique. The term relief is from the Latin verb levo, to raise. To create a sculpture in relief is thus to give the impression that the sculpted material has been raised above the background plane...
depicting the final charge at the battle of Waterloo
Battle of Waterloo
The Battle of Waterloo was fought on Sunday 18 June 1815 near Waterloo in present-day Belgium, then part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands...
. On the east and west faces, the plaques bear the names of the Duke's victorious battles. The east panel lists the battles of Assaye
Battle of Assaye
The Battle of Assaye was a major battle of the Second Anglo-Maratha War fought between the Maratha Confederacy and the British East India Company...
, Talavera, Argaum, Busaco, Rolica
Battle of Roliça
In the Battle of Roliça an Anglo-Portuguese army under Sir Arthur Wellesley defeated an outnumbered French army under General Henri Delaborde, near the village of Roliça in Portugal. The French retired in good order...
, Fuentes de Onoro
Battle of Fuentes de Onoro
In the Battle of Fuentes de Oñoro , the British-Portuguese Army under Viscount Wellington checked an attempt by the French Army of Portugal under Marshal André Masséna to relieve the besieged city of Almeida.-Background:...
, Vimeiro
Battle of Vimeiro
In the Battle of Vimeiro the British under General Arthur Wellesley defeated the French under Major-General Jean-Andoche Junot near the village of Vimeiro , near Lisbon, Portugal during the Peninsular War...
, Cuidad Rodrigo
Siege of Ciudad Rodrigo
In the Siege of Ciudad Rodrigo, the Duke of Wellington's Anglo-Portuguese Army seized the city from its French garrison under Brigadier General Baron Barrié on January 20, 1812 after a siege that started on January 7...
, Oporto, and Badajoz; the west panel Salamanca
Battle of Salamanca
The Battle of Salamanca saw Anglo-Portuguese and Spanish armies under the Duke of Wellington defeat Marshal Auguste Marmont's French forces among the hills around Arapiles south of Salamanca, Spain on July 22, 1812 during the Peninsular War....
, Bayonne
Battle of Bayonne
In the Battle of Bayonne on April 14, 1814, General of Division Thouvenot's French garrison attacked the Allied besieging force under Lieutenant General John Hope...
, Vittoria
Battle of Vitoria
At the Battle of Vitoria an allied British, Portuguese, and Spanish army under General the Marquess of Wellington broke the French army under Joseph Bonaparte and Marshal Jean-Baptiste Jourdan near Vitoria in Spain, leading to eventual victory in the Peninsular War.-Background:In July 1812, after...
, Orthez
Battle of Orthez
The Battle of Orthez saw the Anglo-Portuguese Army under Field Marshal Arthur Wellesley, Marquess of Wellington defeat a French army led by Marshal Nicolas Soult in southern France near the end of the Peninsular War.-Preliminaries:...
, San Sebastian
Siege of San Sebastian
In the Siege of San Sebastián Allied forces under the command of General Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington captured the city of San Sebastián in northern Spain from its French garrison under Brigadier-General Louis Rey...
, Toulouse
Battle of Toulouse (1814)
The Battle of Toulouse was one of the final battles of the Napoleonic Wars, four days after Napoleon's surrender of the French Empire to the nations of the Sixth Coalition...
, Nivelle
Battle of Nivelle
The Battle of Nivelle took place in front of the River Nivelle near the end of the Peninsular War . After the Allied siege of San Sebastian, Wellington's 80,000 British, Portuguese and Spanish troops were in hot pursuit of Marshal Soult who only had 60,000 men to place in a 20-mile perimeter...
, Quatre Bras, and Waterloo
Battle of Waterloo
The Battle of Waterloo was fought on Sunday 18 June 1815 near Waterloo in present-day Belgium, then part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands...
. Also on and around the base of the monument are pre-metric standard Board of Trade
Board of Trade
The Board of Trade is a committee of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom, originating as a committee of inquiry in the 17th century and evolving gradually into a government department with a diverse range of functions...
measurements of length, the shorter ones being embossed on a bronze panel. Set into the pavement is a brass strip containing the measure of 100 feet (30.5 m), and a chain of 100 links.
The statue is unusual in that it does not face any major civic building or thoroughfare (as does Nelson's Column
Nelson's Column
Nelson's Column is a monument in Trafalgar Square in central London built to commemorate Admiral Horatio Nelson, who died at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. The monument was constructed between 1840 and 1843 to a design by William Railton at a cost of £47,000. It is a column of the Corinthian...
in London). The statue was positioned facing south-east so that Wellington would always be looking towards the site of Waterloo - considered his greatest victory.