| Sabrina Fountain | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Artist | William Burges |
| Year | 1858 |
| Movement | Gothic Revival |
| Condition | unexecuted |
| Location | Victoria and Albert Museum, London |
The Sabrina Fountain was designed by William Burges in 1858. Commemorating the legendary princess Hafren, who was drowned in the River Severn, Burges intended the fountain to stand in the city of Gloucester but it was never executed.
William Burges designed the fountain in 1858. [1] It was intended to commemorate Hafren (aka Sabrina), a legendary British princess. Geoffrey of Monmouth, in his Historia Regum Britanniae , records that Hafren and her mother were drowned in the River Severn on the orders of her father's first wife, and that the river derives its name from her. [2] The Severn flows through the city of Gloucester and Burges intended that the fountain stand in one of the city's squares. Joseph Mordaunt Crook, the foremost Burges scholar, noted the "quaint grotesquerie" of Burges' designs which illustrate Sabrina's death and those of her father, Locrinus and her mother Estrildis. [3]
Sabrina is also the subject of John Milton’s play Comus , and Burges’ statue is referenced in Jan Piggot's study, Comus: From text to stage, the fine arts, and book illustration, c.1750-1850. [4]
The fountain was never built. The sketch was used as the frontispiece of the illustrated study of Burges' work, The Architectural Designs of William Burges, authored by his brother-in-law Richard Popplewell Pullan and published after Burges' death. [5] It is now held in the Prints and Drawings Collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. [6]
A number of other architects and artists have used Sabrina as a model for fountains, or sculptures. The most directly related is the Crawford Market Fountain in Mumbai, India, designed by William Emerson and decorated by John Lockwood Kipling. Created in 1874, it exhibits remarkable similarities to the Burges fountain, a point noted by Christopher London in his work, Bombay Gothic. [lower-alpha 1] [7]
James Milo Griffith created a Sabrina Fountain in 1881. Commemorating Henry Whitmore, Member of Parliament (MP) for Bridgnorth in the mid-19th century, it stands in the grounds of Bridgnorth Castle, Shropshire. [8] A Statue of Sabrina created by the sculptor William Calder Marshall is now owned by Amherst College in the United States, and is the subject of regular student pranks. [9] A modern interpretation, The Apotheosis of Sabrina, of 1980, is by Gerald Laing and stands on Narrow Quay, in Bristol City Centre. [10]
Monmouth is a market town and community in Monmouthshire, Wales, situated on where the River Monnow joins the River Wye, two miles from the Wales–England border. The population in the 2011 census was 10,508, rising from 8,877 in 2001. Monmouth was the county town of historic Monmouthshire, although Abergavenny is the largest settlement and Monmouthshire County Council has its main offices at Rhadyr, just outside Usk. Monmouth is in the Monmouth UK Parliament and Senedd constituencies.
The River Severn, at 220 miles (354 km) long, is the longest river in Great Britain. It is also the river with the most voluminous flow of water by far in all of England and Wales, with an average flow rate of 107 m3/s (3,800 cu ft/s) at Apperley, Gloucestershire. It rises in the Cambrian Mountains in mid Wales, at an altitude of 2,001 feet (610 m), on the Plynlimon massif, which lies close to the Ceredigion/Powys border near Llanidloes. The river then flows through Shropshire, Worcestershire and Gloucestershire. The county towns of Shrewsbury, Worcester and Gloucester lie on its course.
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Gloucester is a cathedral city and the county town of Gloucestershire in the South West of England. Gloucester lies on the River Severn, between the Cotswolds to the east and the Forest of Dean to the west; it is sited 19 miles (31 km) east of Monmouth and 17 miles (27 km) east of the border with Wales. Gloucester has a population of around 132,000, including suburban areas. It is a port, linked via the Gloucester and Sharpness Canal to the Severn Estuary.
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William Burges was an English architect and designer. Among the greatest of the Victorian art-architects, he sought in his work to escape from both nineteenth-century industrialisation and the Neoclassical architectural style and re-establish the architectural and social values of a utopian medieval England. Burges stands within the tradition of the Gothic Revival, his works echoing those of the Pre-Raphaelites and heralding those of the Arts and Crafts movement.
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Hafren is a legendary British princess who was drowned in the River Severn by her repudiated stepmother Gwendolen. The legend appears in Geoffrey of Monmouth's pseudohistorical chronicle Historia Regum Britanniae. According to Geoffrey, Hafren is the eponym of the Severn, which bears one of Britain's most ancient river names.
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