The Metropolis

Has the endangered elephant sculpture of Victoria trumpteted its last?

Mike Pollitt | Tuesday 23 October, 2012 10:14

Barry Baldwin’s sculptures of endangered animals at Allington House in Victoria face a grim extinction. Historian, tour guide and blogger Peter Berthoud is on the case.

The building is due to go, and developers Land Securities intend to obliterate Baldwin’s triptych with it.

In it, animals burst forth from the stone for a final roar at all the commuters, the passers by, the tourists, the humans, the destroyers of their worlds.

Perhaps we should be heartened that the chosen species are going to outlive their own memorial. You might have got good odds on that when the work was commissioned in the 1980s.

But now it is uneconomic, the developers say, to save them.

Peter has not given up hope. He believes a new home for the creatures could be found, and concludes his post with a call to action:

“Please support the campaign to save them and spread the word via social media. Perhaps there is still time left to persuade Land Securities not to engage in their planned act of corporate vandalism.”

Read Peter Berthoud’s blog post for the full details.

The campaign’s Facebook page is here. And a petition to save the Allington house sculptures is here.

Image – The campaign’s Facebook account

See also:

English Heritage’s round up of London’s newest listed buildings
Is this tarmac-surrounded statue the most endangered Victorian architecture in London?

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