No, that's not the Lions who run the friendly charity bookshop in the town. I refer instead to the lions at the base of the Tenantry Column where many a local child has been taken and photographed by fond parents.Here is one of them, photographed some time in the 50 years or so when there were no railings to protect the lions. I don't think he looks very confident about the experience.
The column is one of the first things you see on entering Alnwick from the south. Everyone knows the supposed stories that the then Duke decided that if the tenantry could subscribe for a column they could logically have their rents raised. But the truth, or otherwise of this is another matter. Part of the intention was to commemorate the Percy Volunteers which had been financed by the second Duke.This was appropriate, considering that the Napoleonic wars had ended only in the previous year of 1815.
It is curious that in his elaborate description of the ceremony of the architectural features and the dedication ceremony for the column the historian of Alnwick, George Tate nowhere mentions the four lions at the base of the structure. They are illustrated rather pathetically in the plate which accompanies his text, but nothing is said about them. Architecturally it is a quality piece of work and the designer was David Stephenson who thirty years before had commenced the building of the remarkable All Saints on Above Newcastle Quayside.
These lions are in fact substantial examples of Coade stone, a commercial product much used in the late C18 and early C19, and the stone of the column itself is from quarries on the Percy estates. But Coade stone is not a stone, it is a form of ceramic and these lions were cast from moulds.Items such as the lions were fired in very largekilns. Coade stone has been described as a species of terracotta. The difference is simply that a combination of finely ground already fired material has been added. These additions include grog, quartz, flint, glass and ball clay. It is in effect a form of stoneware.
On the day of dedication, July 1 1816, a procession left the White Swan Inn. Included were representatives of the tenants, two clergymen and in third place the architect David Stephenson, "with a highly finished silver trowel, ornamented with appropriate devices and inscriptions." The roll of the Percy Volunteers was buried in the foundations "hermetically enclosed in a glass tube."After the ceremony the procession returned whence it came and presumably a good time was had by all.
Descriptive and Historical View of Alnwick: George Tate. I used Frank Graham's reprint of 1973.
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| Coade Stone Lion: Alnwick |
The column is one of the first things you see on entering Alnwick from the south. Everyone knows the supposed stories that the then Duke decided that if the tenantry could subscribe for a column they could logically have their rents raised. But the truth, or otherwise of this is another matter. Part of the intention was to commemorate the Percy Volunteers which had been financed by the second Duke.This was appropriate, considering that the Napoleonic wars had ended only in the previous year of 1815.
These lions are in fact substantial examples of Coade stone, a commercial product much used in the late C18 and early C19, and the stone of the column itself is from quarries on the Percy estates. But Coade stone is not a stone, it is a form of ceramic and these lions were cast from moulds.Items such as the lions were fired in very largekilns. Coade stone has been described as a species of terracotta. The difference is simply that a combination of finely ground already fired material has been added. These additions include grog, quartz, flint, glass and ball clay. It is in effect a form of stoneware.
On the day of dedication, July 1 1816, a procession left the White Swan Inn. Included were representatives of the tenants, two clergymen and in third place the architect David Stephenson, "with a highly finished silver trowel, ornamented with appropriate devices and inscriptions." The roll of the Percy Volunteers was buried in the foundations "hermetically enclosed in a glass tube."After the ceremony the procession returned whence it came and presumably a good time was had by all.
Descriptive and Historical View of Alnwick: George Tate. I used Frank Graham's reprint of 1973.
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