Joseph Bazalgette memorial, Victoria Embankment - close up view

The Sir Joseph Bazalgette Memorial is a memorial to the Victorian engineer Sir

Joseph Bazalgette Sir Joseph William Bazalgette CB (; 28 March 181915 March 1891) was a 19th-century English civil engineer. As chief engineer of London's Metropolitan Board of Works, his major achievement was the creation (in response to the Great Stink of 1 ...

, by

George Blackall Simonds George Blackall Simonds (6 October 1843 – 16 December 1929) was an English sculptor and director of H & G Simonds Brewery in Reading in the English county of Berkshire. Biography George was the second son of George Simonds Senior of Read ...

. It is located on the

Victoria Embankment Victoria Embankment is part of the Thames Embankment, a road and river-walk along the north bank of the River Thames in London. It runs from the Palace of Westminster to Blackfriars Bridge in the City of London, and acts as a major thoroughfare ...

, a few feet up river from the

Hungerford Bridge and Golden Jubilee Bridges The Hungerford Bridge crosses the River Thames in London, and lies between Waterloo Bridge and Westminster Bridge. Owned by Network Rail Infrastructure Ltd (who use its official name of Charing Cross Bridge) it is a steel truss railway bridge ...

, opposite the junction with

Northumberland Avenue Northumberland Avenue is a street in the City of Westminster, Central London, running from Trafalgar Square in the west to the Thames Embankment in the east. The road was built on the site of Northumberland House, the London home of the Percy ...

Artist

(1843–1929) was a Reading sculptor and director of H & G Simonds Brewery. He exhibited consistently at the Royal Academy. Simonds studied under

Johannes Schilling Johannes Schilling (23 June 1828 in Mittweida – 21 March 1910 in Klotzsche near Dresden) was a German sculptor. Life and work Johannes Schilling was the youngest of five children. A year after his birth, his family moved to Dresden, where he g ...

in Dresden, and

Louis Jehotte Louis Jehotte (7 November 1803 or 1804 – 3 February 1884) was a prominent Belgian sculptor working in a realist tradition that was inflected, who was responsible for the bronze equestrian monument to Charlemagne erected on the in Liège, Belg ...

at The Academy of Brussels. He created over 200 pieces in many different media. While ''The Falconer'' (1873) is in

Central Park Central Park is an urban park in New York City located between the Upper West and Upper East Sides of Manhattan. It is the fifth-largest park in the city, covering . It is the most visited urban park in the United States, with an estimated ...

, New York, much of his larger work is to be found in or near Reading. The

Maiwand Lion The ''Maiwand Lion'' is a sculpture and war memorial in the Forbury Gardens, a public park in the town of Reading, in the English county of Berkshire. The statue was named after the Battle of Maiwand and was unveiled in December 1886 to commemor ...

(1866) in the

Forbury Gardens Forbury Gardens is a public park in the town of Reading in the English county of Berkshire. The park is on the site of the outer court of Reading Abbey, which was in front of the Abbey Church. The site was formerly known as the Forbury, and one ...

is his, the statue of Queen Victoria at the Town Hall, the Statue of George Palmer (moved from the High Street to a park) and the statue of H. Blandy, another

mayor of Reading In many countries, a mayor is the highest-ranking official in a municipal government such as that of a city or a town. Worldwide, there is a wide variance in local laws and customs regarding the powers and responsibilities of a mayor as well as ...

. Substantial pieces were also commissioned for Indian locations, Allahabad and

Calcutta Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , List of renamed places in India#West Bengal, the official name until 2001) is the Capital city, capital of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of West Bengal, on the eastern ba ...

. In 1922 he designed the war memorial at Bradfield, Berkshire, which commemorated the deaths of local men in the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

including his son, a lieutenant with the

South Wales Borderers The South Wales Borderers was a line infantry regiment of the British Army in existence for 280 years. It came into existence in England in 1689, as Sir Edward Dering's Regiment of Foot, and afterwards had a variety of names and headquarters. I ...

Subject

Bazalgette was a prolific Victorian engineer, responsible for

the Embankment The Thames Embankment is a work of 19th-century civil engineering that reclaimed marshy land next to the River Thames in central London. It consists of the Victoria Embankment and Chelsea Embankment. History There had been a long history of f ...

on the north of the Thames, as well as the smaller

Albert Embankment Albert may refer to: Companies * Albert (supermarket), a supermarket chain in the Czech Republic * Albert Heijn, a supermarket chain in the Netherlands * Albert Market, a street market in The Gambia * Albert Productions, a record label * Alber ...

to the south. As chief engineer of London's

Metropolitan Board of Works The Metropolitan Board of Works (MBW) was the principal instrument of local government in a wide area of Middlesex, Surrey, and Kent, defined by the Metropolis Management Act 1855, from December 1855 until the establishment of the London Cou ...

his major achievement was the creation (in response to the

Great Stink The Great Stink was an event in Central London during July and August 1858 in which the hot weather exacerbated the smell of untreated human waste and industrial effluent that was present on the banks of the River Thames. The problem had bee ...

of 1858) of a sewer network for central London which was instrumental in relieving the city from cholera epidemics, while beginning to clean the

River Thames The River Thames ( ), known alternatively in parts as the River Isis, is a river that flows through southern England including London. At , it is the longest river entirely in England and the second-longest in the United Kingdom, after the R ...

. Bazalgette's neo-classical mausoleum is in the churchyard of St. Mary's in Wimbledon.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Bazalgette Memorial Bronze sculptures in the United Kingdom 1899 sculptures Sculptures by George Blackall Simonds Outdoor sculptures in London Monuments and memorials in London Grade II listed buildings in the City of Westminster Grade II listed monuments and memorials Victoria Embankment