What was here?
On the roundabout at Chester Road and Orphanage Road stands a bronze bust of Josiah Mason, looking towards the road where his orphanage stood.
History
Mason refused a statue while he lived. In 1869 the Town Council voted to put one in the Corporation Art Gallery; he rejected every design and the scheme was dropped, “much to the satisfaction of Mr. Mason,” wrote his biographer.
After his death a public meeting raised money for one anyway. Francis John Williamson carved a seated figure in marble, unveiled in 1885 opposite Mason College in what is now Chamberlain Square. According to the Art UK record, Mason was shown holding a pen, about to sign the trust deed of his college.
By 1951 the statue was in a poor state of repair, and it was removed. The head was kept. At the suggestion of Birmingham Civic Society and the Erdington Historical Society, William Bloye cast it in bronze, and in 1952 the bust was set up here, near the orphanage that Mason had built. The orphanage itself was demolished twelve years later.
The same spot, then and now
1888–1913
Today
Old map: Ordnance Survey six-inch, reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland (CC BY 4.0). Today: © OpenStreetMap contributors.
The bust has become a local character. People dress it for jubilees and other occasions.
Why it mattered
The only public statue of Mason left in Birmingham, and one of the few physical reminders in Erdington of the orphanage that dominated the district for a century.
What’s there now
What survives
The bronze bust on its pedestal. Williamson’s marble statue does not survive.
Today
On the traffic island at the junction of Chester Road (A452) and Orphanage Road.
Then and now
Then · 30 April 2011
Now · 30 April 2011
Sources and further reading
Details of the 1885 unveiling, the removal in 1951 and the part played by the Civic Society and Erdington Historical Society come from the Art UK record (based on George Noszlopy, Public Sculpture of Birmingham, 1998), read only through search extracts. Wikipedia gives 1951 for the casting; Art UK and Bill Dargue give 1952 for its placing.
- Sir Josiah Mason (1795–1881) (after Francis John Williamson) — Art UK
- Josiah Mason: a biography — John Thackray Bunce, Simpkin, Marshall & Co.; Cornish Brothers, Birmingham, 1882. pp. 137–138
- Erdington — History of Birmingham Places & Placenames A to Y — Bill Dargue
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