What was here?
Until it went into store, a marble statue of Thomas Attwood in the dress of the 1830s, his arm outstretched as if addressing a meeting, on a granite pedestal and tall octagonal stone base near Larches Green, Sparkbrook.
History
Raised by subscription
Attwood died in 1856. His friends set out to give him a monument, and found it hard going. His grandson, C. M. Wakefield, wrote bitterly in 1885 that the committee “found considerable difficulty in raising the paltry sum of £800”. It was enough for a marble statue. On 7 June 1859, the twenty-seventh anniversary of the royal assent to the Reform Act, the Mayor, Sir John Ratcliff, led the council in procession from the Town Hall to Stephenson Place, at the New Street entrance to the railway station, where the statue was unveiled. Wakefield describes a figure “nearly nine feet high, and cut from a fine block of Sicilian marble”, shown “in the act of addressing a meeting”.
Three homes
The statue was moved to Calthorpe Park in 1925 and to Sparkbrook in the mid-1970s, close to the site of The Larches, the house where Attwood had lived as a young married man. Historic England listed it at Grade II in 1982, describing a standing marble figure on a grey granite pedestal set on a high octagonal ashlar plinth with a cast-iron panelled parapet.
Into store
It was taken down and put into store, most sources say in 2008. In September 2018 the photographer Elliott Brown found it in the Birmingham Museum Collections Centre, still covered in graffiti and with an arm missing.
What happened here?
Unveiled in Stephenson Place, New Street, in 1859; moved to Calthorpe Park in 1925 and to Sparkbrook in the mid-1970s; removed to store, damaged, in about 2008.
Why it mattered
It was Birmingham’s tribute to the man who led its fight for the vote, paid for by public subscription within three years of his death, and one of the oldest public statues in the city.
Why it disappeared
Condition of the building
The statue was removed from Sparkbrook for restoration and put into store. In 2018 it was still unrestored, graffitied and missing an arm. No plan to repair and return it has been found.
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.
What’s there now
What survives
The statue itself, in store; its condition in 2018 was poor.
Today
The statue is not on public view. Its last public site was in Sparkbrook near Larches Green and Turner Street. Attwood’s bronze of 1993 sits in Chamberlain Square.
Then and now
Then · 28 June 2006
Now · 16 September 2018
Key dates
- 7 June 1859 — Attwood’s statue is unveiledA marble statue of Attwood, paid for by a subscription of £800, is unveiled in Stephenson Place, New Street, on the anniversary of the Reform Act.
Sources and further reading
Sculptor: the list entry names Peter Hollins; Attwood’s grandson (1885), who printed the unveiling committee’s address praising “the distinguished sculptor, Mr. Thomas”, and the Dictionary of National Biography (1901) name John Thomas. The unveiling date is 7 June 1859 in the committee’s address; the DNB says 7 July. Wikipedia’s claim that it stood in Calthorpe Park from 1859 is contradicted by Wakefield and the DNB (Stephenson Place). Dates of the later moves (1925; 1974 or 1975) and of storage (2008 or 2012) come from Wikipedia, chartistancestors.co.uk and Elliott Brown’s 2018 photograph description, not from council records. A photograph of 2006 calls its Sparkbrook site Highgate Park; the list entry calls it New Park, Turner Street. Whether the pedestal remains on site has not been checked.
- Statue of Thomas Attwood in New Park — National Heritage List for England entry 1076131 — Historic England
- Life of Thomas Attwood — C. M. Wakefield, privately printed, 1885. pp. 428–31
- Attwood, Thomas (1783–1856) — Dictionary of National Biography, 1901 supplement, vol. 1 — Edward Irving Carlyle, Smith, Elder & Co., 1901
- Thomas Attwood 1783–1856 — Chartist Ancestors
- Birmingham Museum Collections Centre – statue of Thomas Attwood (photograph and description) — Elliott Brown
- Thomas Attwood (economist) — Wikipedia
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