Preserving our historic statues

Valerie Mighall and many other readers will be pleased to hear that some local people keen to preserve the town's historic statues have formed an '˜umbrella' charity, with Hastings Voluntary Action's help, to raise funds for this purpose.
By The Newsroom
Published 16th Apr 2016, 16:31 BST

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And, after re-siting Prince Albert (he used to be in the much-missed town centre memorial), will be moving on to restore other statues.

Readers can help by buying The Story of Prince Albert and his Memorial from Bookbuster, Queen’s Road – the whole of the £3 price is going to the project, thanks to the generosity of the proprietor and to Impression IT, who printed the first 100 copies without charge as their contribution.

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Also, Hastings Lions has just made a grant of £5,000 to the project.

Further information on the town’s statues can be found on the Public Monuments and Sculptures Association’s website, from which the Hastings Sculpture Trail can be downloaded as a PDF (Hastings Local History Group provided some of the information and pictures), and printed copies are available from me.

This includes the Harold and Edith statue, which was designed to be kept inside, originally at the Brassey Institute (the library), and its marble has suffered badly from being left open to the elements, to such an extent that the inscription around its base has disappeared.

I think that the best way to protect it in the future would be to build a café at the eastern end of West Marina Gardens, with proper public conveniences, and a glass porch in which the statue could sit and be visible all the time, and at the same time be protected from the ravages of the weather.

Heather Grief

Honorary secretary

HLHG
[email protected]

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