Patrick Comerford
As Charlotte and I were passing through St Pancras station in London last month, on our way to and from Paris on the Eurostar, two sculptures that caught my eye were ‘The Meeting Place’ or ‘The Lovers Statue’ by Paul Day, which is said to make St Pancras ‘one of the most romantic meeting places’, and the larger-than-life statue of the poet Sir John Betjeman by Martin Jennings.
The former Poet Laureate Sir John Betjeman (1906-1984) has been honoured appropriately in this way because he led the campaign to save St Pancras Station and the Chambers from demolition in the 1960s.
Betjeman was a railway enthusiast and a keen advocate for the conservation of Victorian architecture. The 8.5 ft sculpture by Martin Jennings is designed to celebrate the man, his poetry and his campaigning.
Martin Jennings has made many representations of great writers and poets. Apart from John Betjeman at St Pancras Station, his works include Philip Larkin in Hull, Charles Dickens in Portsmouth and George Orwell outside BBC Broadcasting House in London.
He has also worked on celebrated figures from the medical profession, including John Radcliffe in Oxford, Archibald McIndoe in East Grinstead and Mary Seacole outside Saint Thomas’s Hospital in London. His sculpture of the former prime minister Stanley Baldwin stands in Bewdley, Worcestershire, and his seated figure of the actor and comedian Ronnie Barker is in Aylesbury. His sculptures are cast in bronze with accompanying text carved in stone or slate around them.
Martin Jennings lives and works near Stroud in Gloucestershire. He studied calligraphy, letter-cutting and stone-carving following an MA in English Language and Literature at Oxford. He has had numerous commissions to carve memorials and architectural inscriptions for churches and churchyards, cathedrals, colleges and public buildings.
He was commissioned to carve stone figure sculptures and to model portrait busts from life in his Oxford studio. His subjects have included the athlete Roger Bannister, former prime minister Edward Heath, and actor Edward Fox. His sculpture of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother was installed in Saint Paul’s Cathedral, London, in 2000.
The National Portrait Gallery in London displays three of Jennings’s works, including a bronze mask of the author Philip Pullman and a portrait cast in sterling silver of the lawyer Lord Bingham of Cornhill.
The statue of John Betjeman at St Pancras railway station is a depiction in bronze was designed and cast in 2007. It was unveiled on 12 November 2007 by Betjeman’s daughter, Candida Lycett Green and the then Poet Laureate Andrew Motion at the opening of St Pancras International as the London terminus of the Eurostar high-speed rail link between London and mainland Europe.
The location memorialises the connection between St Pancras station and Betjeman, an early and lifelong advocate of Victorian architecture. Betjeman was a founding member of the Victorian Society in 1957, at a time when appreciation of Victorian architecture and its architects was at its nadir.
Critics wrote harshly about of the ‘architectural tragedy’ of the 19thc century, ridiculed ‘the uncompromising ugliness’ of the buildings and attacked the ‘sadistic hatred of beauty’ of its architects.
The Victorian Society met an early defeat in 1961 when British Railways destroyed the Euston Arch, Philip Hardwick’s Doric entrance to Euston Station. Soon after, British Railways announced plans to demolish both St Pancras Station and the attached Midland Hotel, designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott, and King’s Cross station.
As vice-chairman of the Victorian Society, Betjeman led the campaign to save St Pancras. He enlisted the support of Sir John Summerson, noted architectural historian and curator of the Soane Museum, and this support was instrumental in gaining Grade I listed building status for the station and hotel in 1967, a designation that ensured their survival.
Scott’s legacy of churches, cathedrals, houses and public buildings includes the Albert Memorial, the Foreign Office and the former Midland Grand Hotel. He was the architect at Lichfield Cathedral from 1855 to 1878, first restoring the interior and then working on the exterior, including the West Front. But by the time of Betjeman’s campaign to save his station, his reputation was at its lowest.
St Pancras was renovated in a multi-million pound restoration that is now much admired. Critics have recently described it as the ‘greatest of High Victorian secular buildings’ and ‘Britain's most impressive station.’ At the same time, the Midland Hotel was threatened with demolition. But Betjeman and the Victorian Society campaigned to save it and the hotel too was Grade I listed. The hotel reopened in 2011 as the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel.
Martin Jennings shows the poet clad in suit, mackintosh and trilby hat, capturing his ‘shabby appearance, shoelace and scruffy collar are undone … knotted string for one shoelace.’ The poet holds his hat as he gazes up at the glass ceiling of the Barlow Shed in the station. Jennings designed Betjeman’s coat-tail to emulate the shape of the roof of the Barlow Shed.
The 2.10 metre (6.9 ft) statue stands on a plinth of Cumbrian slate with words from some of Betjeman’s poems inscribed in the base. The central text reads: ‘And in the shadowless unclouded glare, / Deep blue above us fades to whiteness where, / A misty sealine meets the wash of air. / John Betjeman, 1906-1984, poet, who saved this glorious station.’
The quotation is verse six of his poem ‘Cornish Cliffs’ – a curious choice as no train ever went southwest from St Pancras. But there are lines from other poems by Betjeman in five roundels dotted around the concourse.
The opening lines to ‘The Hon. Sec.’:
A gentle guest, a willing host,
Affection deeply planted –
It’s strange that those we miss the most
Are those we take for granted
The opening lines to ‘St Saviour’s, Aberdeen Park, Highbury, London N1’:
Beyond the throb of the engines is the throbbing heart of all.
The opening lines of ‘Undenominational’:
Revival ran along the hedge
And made my spirit whole
When steam was on the window panes
And glory in my soul
The opening lines of ‘Uffington’:
Imprisoned in a cage of sound
Even the trivial seems profound.
And the opening lines of ‘Winter Seascape’:
Here where the cliffs alone prevail
I stand exultant, neutral, free,
And from the cushion of the gale
Behold a huge consoling sea.
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