28 March 2026
If You Said This Was London’s Oldest Outdoor Statue, You’d Be Half Right
Tucked away in London’s Trinity Church Square stands a tall statue. Larger than life, it stands 8.5 feet high (2.6 metres), depicting a wise old king. Who that king is, no one is completely sure but it is widely believed to be a representation of King Alfred the Great, who ruled in the 9th century. The statue was once thought to have been made at some point in the 1300s as it reflects the statuary style then prevalent. Simply put, no one ever knew its true provenance although debate raged off and on (no doubt in a very polite British way). Image
What is known with certainty is that it has been in the square since 1831 – getting on for two hundred years. Rather annoyingly and contrary to the often meticulous record-keeping habits of Victorian Londoners, the name of who gifted it to the square is not recorded. So, for all that time, no one knew much about it at all or could offer anything more than educated guesswork. But the statue held a secret or two.
All that changed in 2021 when it was decided, as London and the
rest of the UK peeked shyly through the thick curtains of three Covid lockdowns,
to restore the statue. London Stone Conservation
was commissioned by the Heritage of London Trust to undertake the task. An
analysis of the stone as well as a restoration was requested. It was hoped that the analysis might help
confirm one of two popular theories about the statue’s origins. First, that it
could be an 18th century statue – one of a missing pair – from Carlton
House in the neighboring borough of Westminster. Secondly, that it could be one of eight lost
statues that adorned Richard II’s Westminster Hall in the late 1300s. As it transpired, neither would prove to be the
case.
In fact, the analysis presented a few surprises. The statue is not a single piece of art, sculpted
from the same stone. It’s two. The top part of the statue, from Alfred’s
belt upwards is made of Coade Stone.
Now, this stone was often called “artificial stone” in Victorian times (many
would just call it “fake stone” today). It was a mix of ball clay from Dorset and Devon
(60-70%), soda lime glass (10%), fine quartz (5-10%) and crushed flint
(5-10%). About 10% of the mix was grog
(a mix of alumina and silica, with small amounts of iron oxide, calcium oxide
and magnesium oxide and not, as you might guess, rum and water). So, yes, we
would call it “fake stone” and much of London’s statuary is made of it. It was
invented by Eleanor Coade in 1770. This
means that the top half of our statue was created at some point between 1770
(unlikely to be that early) and when it was deposited in the square in 1831 (a
much likelier approximate age of creation).
Wait, there’s more.
What of the bottom half of the statue? Whence came the flowing robes?
The London Stone Conservation analysts discovered that this was made of Bath Stone. It is a pale, honey-coloured limestone that
is easy to carve and was widely used in historic buildings and sculpture from
Roman times onward. It is quarried around Bath in Somerset, about 115–120 miles
(185–195 km) west of London.
Bath was a significant Roman city. The stone was likely brought
to London around 80-130 AD and carved there by a sculptor (probably imported himself
from another part of the empire). As the
lower part of the statue is remarkably similar to a statue of the Roman goddess
Minerva in a collection at Woburn Abbey, it is thought that, likewise, the
lower part of “Alfred” is of Minerva.
She was the goddess of a number of things at the time the statue was
made, including the arts, professions and handicraft (not to mention war). When
complete, she would have stood at almost 10 feet (3 metres) in height, a little
taller than the current incarnation. So perhaps at one point in time she
looked something like this…
Apologies, but I couldn’t resist visualising how the statue may have looked originally even though I acknowledge that mine is probably not terribly accurate. Yet in a way, it is an accidental but fitting fusion - a Roman goddess and an English king joined in one figure, both linked by ideas of wisdom, protection and civic pride. So, the statue isn’t quite Minerva and it isn’t quite Alfred. Perhaps it should be renamed “Minerfred” – and you can pronounce that any way you wish because it’s very unlikely to catch on. So, how might the original statue have looked in situ?
Here’s a further representation of how the Minerva statue may have looked in a temple dedicated to the goddess. She would certainly have been painted. Plus, there is archaeological evidence for a Romano-Celtic temple complex at Tabard Place near the statue’s current resting place. Of course, this reconstruction is speculative, and based on AI-assisted visualization, (and it even keeps in the modern information plaque) but it gives an idea. Perhaps the statue was, after the Roman retreat from Britain, broken apart by Christian zealots (they did that quite a lot to Roman era statuary) and the lower half survived as a reused piece of stone?
Then, at some point in the early 1800s it was recovered from
building rubble or an older structure in the Southwark area and passed on to a curious
gentleman who came up with a cunning plan. So, the Alfred statue’s base may have
been spotted and incorporated in the 1830s into the new public statue, not
because someone dug up an actual temple, but because the stone fragment had
survived in the urban fabric - a common fate for Roman sculpture in London.
One note here – the process would not have been as simple as
plonking Alfred’s top onto Minerva’s bottom (that sounds like a line from a Carry
On film). Coade Stone shrank in the
kiln. So this would have required very
expert calculations of size and shrinkage, making the finished statue a product
of someone with significant resources.
So, at least half of this strange amalgam is London's oldest outdoor statue after all. We may never know the full story of this remarkable artistic hybrid, but it’s fun to imagine.
