| Statue of Paddington Bear | |
|---|---|
 The statue in 2023 | |
| Artist | Marcus Cornish |
| Completion date | 2000 |
| Type | Sculpture |
| Medium | Bronze |
| Subject | Paddington Bear |
| Location | London Paddington station, London |
| 51°31′02″N0°10′39″W / 51.5171°N 0.1774°W | |
The statue of Paddington Bear at London Paddington station is a bronze sculpture by Marcus Cornish. Erected in 2000, it marks the association between Michael Bond's fictional bear and the station from which his name derives.
The author Michael Bond introduced Paddington Bear to the world in 1958. [1] Inspired by his purchase of a teddy bear as a Christmas present for his wife, and naming the bear Paddington as the couple lived near Paddington Station, Bond imagined the arrival of a real bear at the station in his first novel, A Bear Called Paddington. [2]
Paddington travels to London from Lima, Peru, stowed away in the life boat of a transatlantic vessel, equipped only with a small suitcase, some marmalade sandwiches and a note attached to his coat which reads, "Please look after this bear. Thank you". Adopted by the Brown family, he undergoes a series of adventures, published in fourteen volumes between 1958 and 2018. [3] The last in the series, Paddington's Finest Hour, was published posthumously, [4] following Bond's death at the age of 91 on 27 June 2017. [5]
Paddington Station, the London terminus for the "grandest railway in England", [6] the Great Western Railway, opened in 1854. It was designed by the GWR's own architect, Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Brunel was assisted by Matthew Digby Wyatt in the architectural detailing but the construction design was Brunel's alone. He was influenced by Sir Joseph Paxton's design for the Crystal Palace, particularly in relation to the glazed roofs. [6] The station is a Grade I listed building. [7]
The sculpture was created by Marcus Cornish in 2000. [8] Cast in bronze, the statue stands on Platform 1 under the station clock and was unveiled by Michael Bond on 24 February 2000. [9] Its present location is its second within the station, it having been moved from its original position at the foot of the escalators due to renovation work. [10] Bond's obituary in The Guardian described the statue as "one of the few memorials in London to inspire real affection". [5]
Paddington is an area in the City of Westminster, in central London, England. A medieval parish then a metropolitan borough, it was integrated with Westminster and Greater London in 1965. Paddington station, designed by the engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel opened in 1847. It is also the site of St Mary's Hospital and the former Paddington Green Police Station.
Paddington, also known as London Paddington, is a Central London railway terminus and London Underground station complex, located on Praed Street in the Paddington area. The site has been the London terminus of services provided by the Great Western Railway and its successors since 1838. Much of the main line station dates from 1854 and was designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel.
Thomas Michael Bond was an English author. He is best known for a series of fictional stories for children, featuring the character of Paddington Bear. More than 35 million Paddington books have been sold around the world, and the characters have also appeared in a popular film series and on television. His first book was published in 1958 and his last in 2017, a span of 59 years.
Liskeard railway station serves the town of Liskeard in Cornwall, England. The station is approximately 18 miles (29 km) west of Plymouth on the Cornish Main Line and 264 miles 71 chains (426.3 km) from London Paddington via Box and Plymouth Millbay. It is the junction for the Looe Valley Line. The railway station is situated approximately 0.5 miles (0.80 km) south-west of Liskeard town centre.
St Austell station is a Grade II listed station which serves the town of St Austell, Cornwall, England. It is 286 miles 26 chains from the zero point at London Paddington measured via Box and Plymouth Millbay. The station is operated by Great Western Railway.
Truro railway station serves the city of Truro, Cornwall, England. The station is 300 miles 63 chains from the zero point at London Paddington measured via Box and Plymouth Millbay. It is situated on the Cornish Main Line and is the junction for the Maritime Line to Falmouth Docks.
Redruth station serves the town of Redruth, Cornwall, United Kingdom, and is situated on the Cornish Main Line between Truro and Camborne. The station is 309 miles 68 chains from the zero point at London Paddington measured via Box and Plymouth Millbay.
Isambard Kingdom Brunel was a British civil engineer and mechanical engineer who is considered "one of the most ingenious and prolific figures in engineering history", "one of the 19th-century engineering giants", and "one of the greatest figures of the Industrial Revolution, [who] changed the face of the English landscape with his groundbreaking designs and ingenious constructions". Brunel built dockyards, the Great Western Railway (GWR), a series of steamships including the first purpose-built transatlantic steamship, and numerous important bridges and tunnels. His designs revolutionised public transport and modern engineering.
The Hilton London Paddington, formerly the Great Western Royal Hotel, is a hotel that forms part of the Paddington Station complex in London, England. The hotel was originally the idea of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who was the hotel's first managing director. The funding came in large part from the Directors of the Great Western Railway Company, who were persuaded by Brunel to buy shares in the project. The hotel was built on Praed Street in the early 1850s and opened on 9 June 1854 by H.R.H. The Prince Albert, Prince Consort, having taken 14 months to build. The hotel was designed by architect Philip Charles Hardwick, costing approximately £60,000 including all furnishing and fittings - a building which was 'to rival the facilities of the great hotels on the Continent'. The building effectively forms the main façade of the station, closing off the end of the train shed at the head of the terminal platforms. It was built by Messrs Holland Hannen & Cubitts, the building firm founded by Thomas Cubitt.
The Wharncliffe Viaduct is a brick-built viaduct that carries the Great Western Main Line railway across the Brent Valley, between Hanwell and Southall, Ealing, UK, at an elevation of 20 metres (66 ft). The viaduct, built in 1836–7, was constructed for the opening of the Great Western Railway (GWR). It is situated between Southall and Hanwell stations, the latter station being only a very short distance away to the east.
The Great Western Railway War Memorial is a First World War memorial by Charles Sargeant Jagger and Thomas S. Tait. It stands on platform 1 at London Paddington station, commemorating the 2,500 employees of the Great Western Railway (GWR) who were killed in the conflict. One-third of the GWR's workforce of almost 80,000 left to fight in the First World War, the company guaranteeing their jobs, and the GWR gave over its workshops for munitions manufacturing as well as devoting its network to transporting soldiers and military equipment. The company considered several schemes for a war memorial before approaching Jagger to design a statue. Some officials continued to push for an alternate design, to the point that Jagger threatened to resign. Jagger was working on several other war memorial commissions at the same time as the GWR's, including his most famous, the Royal Artillery Memorial.
Paddington Bear is a fictional character in children's literature. He first appeared on 13 October 1958 in the children's book A Bear Called Paddington and has been featured in more than twenty books written by British author Michael Bond, and illustrated by Peggy Fortnum, David McKee, R. W. Alley and other artists.
Marcus Cornish is a contemporary British sculptor. After obtaining a First Class Honours degree in sculpture at Camberwell School of Art, he went on to gain a Master of Arts degree at the Royal College of Art. A scholarship enabled him to spend time in India, studying the work of traditional Aiyanar potter priests, and his Master's thesis was about their work crafting terracotta horses for Aiyanar shrines in Tamil Nadu. In 1993 he was elected a Member of the Royal British Society of Sculptors.
A bronze statue of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, also known as Brunel Monument or the Isambard Brunel Monument, by Carlo Marochetti, stands on the Victoria Embankment in London, England, at the west end of Temple Place. The statue rests on a Portland stone pedestal, with flanking screens and benches, by the architect Richard Norman Shaw.
Blind Beggar and his Dog is a bronze statue of 1958, by the sculptor Elisabeth Frink, based on the famous ballad The Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green. It stands in the enclosed garden of Tate House, a residential development for the elderly on the Cranbrook Estate in the London district of Bethnal Green. It is a Grade II* listed structure.
Kingston upon Thames War Memorial, in the Memorial Garden on Union Street, Kingston upon Thames, London, commemorates the men of the town who died in the First World War. After 1945, the memorial was updated to recognise casualties from the Second World War. The memorial was commissioned by the town council and was designed by the British sculptor Richard Reginald Goulden. The memorial includes a bronze statue of a nude warrior, carrying a flaming cross and wielding a sword with which he defends two children from a serpent, erected on a granite plinth, with bronze plaques listing the names of the dead. Goulden designed a number of such allegorical memorials, including others at Crompton, Greater Manchester, and Redhill, Surrey. The Kingston memorial was designated a Grade II listed structure in 1983. This was revised upwards in 2016 to Grade II*, denoting a building or structure of particular importance.
The Gorilla sculpture by David Wynne stands beside the Lower Lake in Crystal Palace Park, in Bromley in south-east London. Completed in 1961 and installed in 1962, the black marble sculpture depicts Guy the Gorilla, a western lowland gorilla brought from West Africa to London Zoo in 1947. It became a Grade II listed structure in 2016.
A bronze statue of Robert Stephenson by Carlo Marochetti usually stands on a red granite plinth in the forecourt of Euston railway station in London, England. Erected in 1871, it is one of few surviving elements of the original station after it was redeveloped in the 1960s, and it became a Grade II listed building in 1974. It was temporarily removed in 2020 to allow the station to be remodelled to accommodate the new High Speed 2 (HS2) railway line.
Media related to Paddington Bear statue, Paddington station at Wikimedia Commons| Television series |
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