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Over-life size bronze statue of Queen Victoria seated on large throne. She is wearing a lace dress with the Order of Garter, under the coronet is a veil. A sceptre is held in the right hand, an orb in the left. Above the Queen's head is the royal coat of arms. In the space between the mouldings at the top of the throne is a bronze figure of St George fighting the dragon. On the rear of the surround positioned in a recess, decorated in blue mosaic tiles, is a bronze sculpture of a female figure, representing Motherhood. She is wearing a crown of roses and thorns beneath drapery, and holding two infants in her arms. The monument rises from six steps.

From the 1850s onwards, the idea that Manchester might raise a full-sized statue of Queen Victoria was suggested on a number of occasions, particularly in connection with the civic space in front of the Infirmary. When, in 1854, Sir Joseph Paxton proposed a statue of the Queen as part of his plan for the Piccadiily Espalande, he was repeating an idea which had been current for a number of years. A statue of the Queen was also one of the ideas suggested by Alfred Waterhouse in the discussions on the interior decorations of the new town hall. None of these schemes were realised but Queen Victoria did not go uncommemorated in the city. A marble bust by Noble was presented to the Council in 1856. It was displayed in the town hall, King Street, before being removed, along with the busts of other members of the royal family, to the great hall in the new town hall, Albert Square. Out of doors, statues were to be found on Queens Buildings, John Dalton Street and on the Lawrence Buildings in Mount Street. In 1898 [?] a statue of the Queen, sculpted by her daughter Princess Louise, was placed above the entrance to the new west porch - the Victoria Porch - of the cathedral. However, unlike Salford, where a life-size marble statue was installed in Peel Park in 1857, Manchester did not have a major public statue of the Queen until the beginning of the twentieth century. The celebrations surrounding the 1897 Jubilee proved the catalyst for the commissioning of Manchester's statue of Queen Victoria. As in other communities, Manchester established a Jubilee Commemoration Fund. It collected some £19,000, a sum that was thought by some people to be disappointing but was explained in part by the fact that it followed almost immediately on the fund-raising efforts to relieve victims of the Indian famine. The Jubilee Commemoration Fund Committee, chaired by Sir Frank Forbes Adam, decided that part of the money raised would be used to provide a statue. it was left to a sub- committee, appointed in May 1897, to determine the sculptor, the form of the statue, the site and the amount of money that would be spent on this part of the commemoration. The commitee members included xx Armitage, xx Donner, xx Simon, xx Holland and xx Levy. At their first meeting they agreed the central features of the scheme: the statue would be of a collossal size and in Carrara marble, and it would be sited outside, preferably on the Esplanade in Picadilly. On the question of the sculptor, the sub-committee sought advice from the Royal Academy about artists who had already sculpted the Queen. The sub-committee then approached nine sculptors to provide outline designs for Manchester's Victoria. Having considered the drawings and photographs submitted by the artists, the sub-committee agreed that no further competition would be necessary, believing that they had seen the best British sculptors. They then decided that Manchester's most important commission since the Albert Memorial, would be given to Onslow Ford, who had emerged for the new sculpture movement as the most sought after portrait sculptor. Ford accepted. He estimated that it would take some two years to complete the marble sculpture and pedestal at a cost of between 2,000 and 2,500 guineas. Ford was to have the benefit of a personal sitting from the Queen. But the commission did not proceed without changes, the most significant being the decision to use bronze rather than marble for the statue, a change attributed to the Queen's concern that marble would weather poorly in Manchester's notoriously smoky atmosphere. The committee also settled the question of location, obtaining the necessary permissions to position the statue in front of the Infirmary, halfway between the Peel and Wellington monuments. This was almost the exact location denied to the Albert Memorial in 1862. By August 1900 Onslow Ford was reporting that the statue was at the foundry. However, the intention that the memorial would be soon completed was not realised, and it was not until the spring of 1901, by which time Queen Victoria was dead, that the work was sufficiently completed to be exhibited at the Royal Academy. The inauguration of Manchester's Victoria jubilee memorial was a far more solemn occasion as the Queen had died at the beginning of the year. The statue was unveiled by the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, Lord Roberts, in a ceremony that was notable for the lack of public order usually present on such occasions. One reason for this was that grandstands built 'for the accommodation of privileged citizens and their ladies' obscured the view of sections of the huge crowd that had gathered in Piccadilly. Confusion and commotion ensued as people pushed each other in an effort to find a better viewing point. Although the Manchester Evening News reassured its readers that 'nine-tenths of the people packed behind the barrier...were men of a distinctly rough type, who could well withstand the many rude buffetings they were necessarily subject to', others in the crowd proved less robust and required medical treatment. Calls for order had little effect and only a few of the thousands gathered in Piccadilly could have heard Lord Roberts' speech. At the close of the ceremony some of the privileged guests found themselves using chairs and even a ladder 'to cross the spiked railing dividing Piccadilly from the Infirmary grounds', in an effort to avoid the crush. Although the unveiling ceremony was captured on film, the surviving newsreel film concentrates on the unveiling rather than on the accompanying disturbances. It was, the Manchester City News concluded, in an editorial that criticised both the organising committee and the police, simply good fortune that no one was killed. All this was clearly a long way removed from the visit made by the Queen to Manchester fifty years before to the very day, when she had confided that: 'There are 400,000 inhabitants in Manchester, and every one says that in no other town could one depend so entirely upon the quiet and orderly behaviour of the people as in Manchester. You had only to tell them what ought to be done, and it was sure to be carried out.' Onslow Ford's statue proved to be a controversial representation of the Queen. Even before the statue had arrived in Manchester it was subjected to hostile comment in the London press. Its reception at the Royal Academy in May 1901 was far from encouraging. Critics found fault with both the statue and its architectural setting. The Athenaeum focused its criticisms on the latter aspect. 'The architectural setting of the sculpture is altogether unfortunate. Massive supports of three different and incongruous varieties combine to uphold over the back of the throne a broken pediment. The angle at which the halves of this are set and the meagre proportions of the mouldings give them the ridiculous appearance of the folding lids of a box, out of which one expects at any moment some preposterous climax will emerge. The utter want of continuity in the style of this hybrid structure is still further seen in the quasi-Romanesque decorations on the side of the throne. With such a basis for the sculpture few designs could be expected to succeed, and Mr Onslow Ford's figure of the Queen has surely succumbed.' The Westminster Review [?] was equally disapproving, dismissing the setting as 'at once the most pretentious, the most incoherent and the most inept of any sculptural monument one has ever seen in England, which is notorious for its inadequacy in this particular line.' Once the statue had been unveiled, Manchester voices swelled the chorus of fault-finders. Onslow Ford's sombre and weary-looking queen did not impress. Letters to the local newspapers were characterised by deep disappointment, unable to understand how the jubilee commitee could have agreed to select such a representaion of the elderly queen. One correspondent summed up the popular reaction to the statue: 'It is that as a work of art it is bad, and as a work of patriotism it is futile.' A further indication of the popular mood was to be found in Salford Council chamber where references to Manchester's Victoria provoked laughter during discussions of its own South African War Memorial. Appreciative assessments were less easy to find. Among these was one of the Manchester Guardian's leader writers who recognised the quality and distinctiveness of the work, asserting that the only other Manchester statues aranting comparison with Onslow Ford's Victoria were Chantrey's Dalton, Woolner's Moses and Gilbert's Joule. Possibly more loathed than admired, Manchester's Victoria monument was too large and too centrally loated not to become a city landmark. The memorial, however, was not immune from vandalism: the cross on the Imperial Crown being broken off before the First World War. In later years other parts - the cross on the orb, the cords on the Queen's robe, and St George's lance were either removed or broken. The steps, when not protected with flower planters, also served as a meeting place for individuals and and as a natural platform for unofficial public meetings. Over the years calls have been made for the statue to be moved out of the city centre or even demolished. The memorial has been cleaned intermittently, on one such occasion the operation being filmed. Currently, the memorial is showing the obvious signs of neglect. The re-landscaping of Piccadilly Gardens in 2001 should result in the statue being cleaned and, more importantly, restored. NB Maternity inscription: 'Let me but bear your love, I'll bear your cares' is a quotation from Henry IV Part II

Queen Victoria to mark the Diamond Jubilee

circa

raw year

Condition

At risk

Inscriptions

Signatures

Statue

Bronze

289cm high

Pedestal

Marble

243cm high (incl steps) x 300cm wide

Maternity

Bronze

220cm high approx

Corrosion, Deterioration

Weathering of pedestal

Cracks, splits, breaks, holes

marble throne and pedestal cracked and dirty; the cross on both the crown and orb on the statue of Victoria broken off; lance of St George missing;

Graffiti

Extensive to front and rear of base. The steps are used by skateboarders.