In January the Coventry Society Secretary noticed a sculpture that he hadn’t seen before near the Ring Road. He took a photo on his phone and posted it on the Visit Historic Coventry facebook page asking for information about it. The Coventry Telegraph saw the post and responses and wrote an article about it.
Martin Williams, CovSoc member and Chair of the Friends of Coventry Cathedral, saw that article and in the latest edition of his e-news he tells us a bit more about the sculptor and the Cathedral commission. Martin writes….
We are all familiar with the statue of Mary in the Cathedral’s Lady Chapel, but I have just read in the Coventry Telegraph of another Coventry sculpture by the same artist, John Bridgeman, of which I was unaware.
The other sculpture is an untitled abstract work and it can be found in the city centre on an area of grass behind Lamb Street close by a surviving section of the old city wall. It is noticeable as it is 2 metres tall, but its location is out of the way and hides it from casual view.
At the time when Bridgeman created the Cathedral’s statue he lived at Upton, Warwickshire and was head of the Department of Sculpture at the College of Arts and Crafts in Birmingham. Some of the original designs for the lower section of the Cathedral tapestry had included scenes from the life of Mary, mother of our Lord. Those scenes were dropped as the design developed, so that when the Cathedral finally opened there was no visible reference to Our Lady in the final design of the Lady Chapel.
Bridgeman’s statue of Mary was commissioned by the Cathedral as a memorial to John Wickens, who was the Provost’s Verger from 1957 until his sudden death on 29th May 1969.