South Bank Lion

The South Bank Lion is a 13-ton ceramic stoneware sculpture on Westminster Bridge Road in London, famous for surviving World War II bombings and being made from durable Coade stone. Sculpted by William Frederick Woodington in 1837, the statue originally stood painted red atop the Lion Brewery. King George VI personally intervened to save the lion from demolition in 1949, leading to its relocation and restoration.

London Β· from the walk β€œThe Artist's Thames” Β· audio ~4 min Β· Generated

South Bank Lion, Westminster Bridge Road, London SE1

Who saved London's South Bank Lion from demolition in 1949?

Take a good look at this glossy white beast beside you. Thirteen tons of sculpted muscle and mane, nearly two centuries old... and yet every whisker, every claw, every fold of that magnificent mane is still Razor sharp. How is that possible?......... The answer is a material that should fascinate any visual artist. This lion is made of Coade stone... not stone at all, really, but a fired ceramic stoneware. A kind of fortified clay, mixed with crushed flint, ground glass, and pre-fired terracotta β€” what potters call "grog." The whole thing was fired at over a thousand degrees for Four days straight. The result? A surface that laughs at London's pollution, acid rain, and centuries of frost.......... And here's where the story gets extraordinary. This material was perfected by a woman named Eleanor Coade, starting in seventeen sixty-nine, right Here in Lambeth... just steps from where you're standing now. Her factory sat on the riverbank, on the very ground now beneath the Royal Festival Hall. In an era totally dominated by men, she ran her business for over fifty years, supplying the greatest architects of the age β€” Robert Adam, John Nash, John Soane. Her secret recipe was so closely guarded that after her death in eighteen twenty-one, it was Lost entirely... not rediscovered until the end of the twentieth century.......... The sculptor who shaped this lion was William Frederick Woodington, a painter And sculptor. You might know his other major work without realizing it β€” he created the bronze relief of the Battle of the Nile on the plinth of Nelson's Column, just across the river in Trafalgar Square! Inscribed under one of this lion's paws are his initials and a very precise date... the twenty-fourth of May, eighteen thirty-seven.......... Originally, this lion stood high on the parapet of the Lion Brewery, painted a vivid Red, gazing out over the Thames. The French novelist Emile Zola, staying at the Savoy directly across the river in eighteen ninety-three, spotted it through the morning fog and wrote that it amused him greatly β€” "this British Lion waiting to wish me good morning." He became so fond of it that when he returned to London years later, fleeing France during the Dreyfus affair, he sought out what he called "my lion."

...... During the Blitz, while buildings all around were flattened, the lion survived. A wartime saying sprang up: "So long as the lion stands, London will stand." When the derelict brewery was set for demolition in nineteen forty-nine to build the Festival Hall, thousands of Londoners petitioned to save him. Then King George the Sixth Himself intervened... his secretary phoned the Chairman of the London County Council directly. And when a King asks... you obey.......... The lion was carefully lowered, and workers discovered a time capsule hidden in a recess in its back β€” a bottle containing two William the Fourth coins and an old Coade trade card, sealed inside since eighteen thirty-seven.......... Now here's one last detail for your artist's eye. Look at his color β€” that creamy, luminous white. For decades he was painted glossy red. It wasn't until nineteen sixty-six, when he was moved to this spot, that the paint was stripped away... revealing the original Coade stone beneath, still pristine after more than a century hidden under pigment. The material Eleanor Coade created was so perfect... it needed no protection at all.

Nearby stories