Again I’ve been walking with, or at least past or close to or in the vicinity of, obelisks. I’m tempted say ‘it’s what I do’ and recently it kind of is, but it’s a new interest, not quite an obsession yet, and I don’t altogether know why. I just like ‘em is all.
Last week, walking with top photographer Jason Oddy, we went to look at Edwin Lutyens’ Royal Naval DivisionWar Memorial on Horse Guards Parade (that’s it below). It was designed immediately after the First World War in which the Royal Naval Division took terrible losses at Gallipoli.
For a monument it’s rather well-travelled. It was first placed in Horse Guards Parade in 1925, ten years after Gallipoli, but it was moved during the Second World War, for safety. After that it went to the Royal Naval College in Greenwich, and only returned to Horse Guards Parade in 2003.
It’s tucked away at the side of the parade ground, and nobody was paying it any attention. It was evidently once a fountain, but it was bone dry on the day we looked at it.
Jason and I were heading for Waterloo so inevitably we walked past Cleopatra’s Needle, which people seem to think is a great place to hang out and pose, though it doesn’t look very comfortable, especially if you sit on the sphinx.
And then a couple of days back I went to Spitalfields to have another look (I mean, I’d seen it before in passing) at the obelisk in the wall of the garden adjacent to Hawksmoor’s Christ Church. Built into it is a drinking fountain, supplied by the Metropolitan Drinking Fountain Association in 1860, but again it was dry.
If you walk into the garden you’ll see another obelisk stashed away in a corner, disappearing behind greenery. This one is a memorial to the Nash family from the early 19thcentury.
The website for British listed buildings describes it as ‘Portland stone with statuary marble inscription panels. Square obelisk surmounted by a flaming gadrooned urn.’ I had never encountered the word gadrooned before. I have obviously led a sheltered life.
The garden is a place you can walk and sit and admire the obelisks (although I didn’t see anybody else doing that) and nobody will bother you. I sat there for a while and noticed what I took to be a family group sitting nearby. I didn’t see marriage or birth certificates but it looked like mum, dad and teenage son. They were drinking beer, and although I wasn’t watching very closely, I did notice that after a while the dad lit his crack pipe. Ah, families.
What I have learned subsequently is that Nicolas Hawksmoor designed Britain’s first large obelisk (80 feet tall) erected in the market place in Ripon in 1702, and much messed about with since. I feel the need for a field trip coming on.
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