Trevithick Monument

1993

For over fifty years the plinth for this sculpture had stood empty. It was intended to commemorate the inventor of the steam locomotive, Richard Trevithick and its first ever journey across the site in 1804. Sadly, Leonard Stanford Merrifield, the sculptor who was due to create a bronze figure of Trevithick, died in 1943 before the full size bronze could be realised.
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Being rather an admirer of Merrifield’s work (his lovely statue of Hedd Wyn in Trawsfynydd is just up the valley from me) I was keen to both acknowledge Merrifield’s skills in bronze and to finally do justice to the fifty-year-old plaque on the monument recording the first steam locomotive in the world. I felt the best way to fulfil both aspirations was by a figurative approach, not one I would normally adopt. The circumstances were striking, the event so momentous and the engine itself so sculptural that it seemed most fitting to simply recreate the engine, but at one-third scale to fit the plinth. Chris Butler at Castle Fine Art Foundry oversaw the realisation into bronze and enjoyed the shapes of the engine as much as I did.

The low-relief bronze portrait of Trevithick that I created for the original surrounding planting scheme was subsequently removed for safe keeping, and now looks down from the safer, but less prepossessing wall of Merthyr Tydfil’s Tesco car park.

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