Thames Ditton Foundry

L2 Day 8. A sunny morning so a nice cycle to Thames Ditton. It must have been very different at the end of the 19C when there was a busy Foundry on one side of the road and the Ferry Works making engines on the other side of the road by the river. The pub, now called Ye Olde Swan would have been there and no doubt provided refreshment for the workers.

The building on the site of the Foundry now is occupied by a company called Nucleus who are a Brand and Digital Agency.

Many famous bronze statues for a variety of eminent sculptors were cast in the Foundry including...a statue of Prince George, Duke of Cambridge in Whitehall; King Edward VII in Liverpool; the Quadriga on the top of the Wellington Arch; figures for the Victoria Memorial facing Buckingham Palace; Emmeline Pankhurst in Victoria Tower Gardens; Lord Kitchener on Horse Guards Parade as well as many that went abroad...including Baghdad, India, Adelaide, Toronto and Sydney.
The large statue of Queen Victoria outside the Queen Victoria Building in Sydney has an interesting history.......This statue was the last royal statue to be erected in Ireland in 1908. Some time after the Irish State declared itself a republic it was removed from its original location in 1948 and was taken to a courtyard at the Royal Hospital Kilmainham where it stayed until 1980 when it was transferred to a yard behind a disused children’s reformatory at Faingean, County Offaly. When the Victoria Building in Sydney was undergoing major renovations in the 1980s appropriate public art was being sought for the entrance, this statue was rediscovered and in 1986 Fine Gael Taoiseach, Garret FitzGerald, authorised that the statue be given to Australia “on loan until recalled”. It was transported to Sydney and was installed 43 years after it had last been on display! We saw the statue and visited the magnificent Queen Victoria Building when we visited Sydney in 2015 and I have a photo of it! See extra.