Littell's Living Age/Volume 162/Issue 2091/The Wellington Statue

ON Monday morning, the 19th May, the statue having been handed over to the military authorities, an enclosure was erected round the monument, under the direction of Colonel Close, of Woolwich Arsenal. A number of artificers from the arsenal were then set to work erecting scaffolding and in punching off the heads of the rivets which held the head of the duke to the body. On the following day, when the result of the division in the House of Lords adverse to the removal of the statue became known, it was too late to stop the works, the head being then half off, and the derricks in position for lowering it to the ground. On Wednesday morning the head with its cocked-hat and plumes was carefully and safely deposited on the ground, and placed in a corner of the enclosure on some blocks of wood. A curious discovery was then made in the interior of the duke’s cocked hat, in the shape of a perfect bird’s nest of twigs, evidently built by some industrious starling. The nest had been built on the crown of the duke’s head, and entrance to it was effected from under the ends of the great plume at the point of the hat. The nest was allowed to remain. The dimensions of the hat are four feet long by one and one-half feet high, the plume measuring three feet across, and the head and hat weighing about half a ton. It was found by Colonel Close on inspection that the monument had been cast in a great many pieces, four of which were riveted together with bolts, the others being forged together at the foundry, and therefore not being capable of division without injury to the work. The four riveted portions were the head and body of the duke, and the head and tail of the horse. Before these were divided it was necessary to find the position of the bolts from inside. A workman of medium size was hoisted for this purpose up to the neck, now bereft of the head, and he, with the greatest ease, slipped through the duke’s collar into the hollow bodies of the rider and the horse. He found plenty of room to stand up and walk about inside with freedom. The body of the duke, he found, was joined a little below the sword-belt, the horse’s head from the withers to a point above the breastplate in front, and the tail at the crupper. Throughout the metal was not less in thickness than half an inch, in some places being as much as two and one-half inches thick. The legs of the horse were solid, in order to support the weight of the statue, computed in all at thirty tons. The whole monument, with the exception of the plume, which is of copper, is made of gun metal of rather inferior quality, being that of guns captured by the duke in his various engagements. The workmen were engaged yesterday in cutting the screws which held the trunk of the duke to the horse’s back, and on Saturday it is believed that the work will have advanced sufficiently to allow of its being taken down, after which the removal of the horse’s head and tail will be carried out. When this has been completed, the horse will be turned upside down and placed on its back on a specially constructed truck now being built at Woolwich Arsenal. This will have to bear a weight of over eighteen tons. It will be fully a month before the monument is ready for starting for Aldershot, and it will be some time on the road, as a circuitous route will have to be taken to avoid weak bridges, hills, and archways. Mr. Boehm is busily engaged in modelling the new statue, but the work has not sufficiently advanced to permit inspection, though before it is cast it will be open to view. The spurs of the now partially demolished statue, which were thought to have been lost, are in safe keeping at the offices of the Board of Works. The statue will be re-erected outside the headquarters of the Aldershot garrison.