Building Name

S & J Watts War Memorial, (Britannia Hotel), Portland Street, Manchester

Date
1923
Street
Portland Street
District/Town
Central, Manchester
County/Country
GMCA, England
Work
New Build

WAR MEMORIALS, SOME EXAMPLES IN MANCHESTER WAREHOUSES -  In the entrance portico of the warehouse of Messrs S and J Watts in Portland Street, is a monument in which two young artists have collaborated, Mr Hubert Worthington, the architect, and Mr C S Jagger, one of our recent Rome Scholars in sculpture. The warehouse itself is a large darkly Victorian structure in stone, which though broken in the upper storeys into rather fantastical shapes, has a base of great scale and strength. Into this base two entrances are pierced, each forming a columned and arcaded loggia. The external columns of each are in stone, in keeping with the exterior, the internal ones in scagliola – that is to say in an imitation marble. The latter columns are small in scale and, with their adjacent detail, seem rather frivolous for their position. The war memorial is placed at either end of this loggia and consists of a colossal figure of a soldier standing in his cloak and helmet with his legs slightly apart, giving the impression of immense firmness and strength. The bronze figure is placed on a strong simple grey granite pedestal and faces a large slab of the same material at the opposite end of the loggia on which the inscription is cut in finely designed letters. Now this figure of a soldier is very far from any obvious realism, and is the first satisfactory figure of a soldier I have seen in a modern war memorial. It is extraordinarily impressive as it stands there with intense immobility, a little large and crude perhaps for its surroundings; such a figure makes one understand the rock of national character against which the German flood broke in vain. It is truly monumental in its combined steadfastness and power. It is sculpture like this, and this only, free from any trivial suggestion, that can at all express the depth of feeling the war called forth. - Professor C H Reilly [Manchester Guardian 9 February 1923 page 5]

Sculpture    Charles Sargen Jagger

Reference    Architectural Review Volume 50. March 1924 page 97 with photographs
Reference    Professor Reilly Manchester Guardian 9 February 1923 page 5