Guest blog: Lost sculptures of Liverpool

By Laura Davis on Nov 13, 09 08:56 AM

THIS is a first in what I hope will be a regular series of guest blogs by history experts at National Museums Liverpool.

Dr Clemency Fisher of the World Museum Liverpool is looking for help from Pool of Life readers...

Lost: Has anyone seen a marble lady with her foot on a water pot?

William Roscoe (1753-1831), who could quite possibly be said to have founded culture in Liverpool, was a man with many hats - politician, solicitor, booklover, supporter of the arts, founder of the now sadly defunct Liverpool Botanic Garden, and poet. He lived in several different houses in central and south Liverpool, one being The Elms, which was on the dog-leg between Park Road and Aigburth Road (the road next to where it stood still bears this name).

Much of Roscoe's poetry was published, and many people will know The Butterfly's Ball. One of Roscoe's other most important poems was The Nymph of the Dingle, written in about 1790. From this we get a wonderful vision of the Dingle Stream, which used to run down Park Road and then through the Dingle down to the Mersey, as it looked before it was culverted.

"Stranger, that with careless feet, / wanderest near this green retreat, / where, through gently bending slopes, / soft the distant prospect opes: / Where the fern in fringed pride / decks the lonely valley's side / where the linnet chirps his song, / flitting as thou tread'st along .... Once a naiad rolled her flood".

The sculptor Benjamin Spence's marble Psyche at the well used to be in a cupola next to the Dingle Stream, to represent Roscoe's poem. She stood there for many years, demurely holding her water pot. We are not sure whether this sculpture is the same as the one that used to be in the Gladstone Conservatory in Stanley Park, or the statue now in the sculpture gallery at the Walker Art Gallery, or whether they were all exact copies of each other.

Another marble lady naiad, in this case posed demurely with her foot on her water pot, used to stand in the Turner Home, the gothic mansion also on the dog-leg. This statue has been missing since the second world war, although the plinth is still there. This seems to be the version of the Nymph of the Dingle which Roscoe had copied as an illustration for the cover of his published poem.

Does anyone know where this Turner Home sculpture is now, or what happened to it, or does anyone remember it being there, or have a photograph? Does anyone know anything about Psyche at the well and her copies? Please let us know!

We need this information for a display on Toxteth Deer Park, for the History Detectives section at the new Museum of Liverpool. Please contact me:
clem.fisher@
liverpoolmuseums.org.uk