From a reader
Dear John
Not so much a tale about the East End but a request for some detective work for you to follow up. Perhaps an article in it? As a Wapping resident of the past 21 years I regularly admired the Henry Moore bronze of mother and child that used to stand in front of the flats on Jamaica Road. During some renovation work some years ago it disappeared and has never been put back. I sem to remember that the sculpture had a colloquial local name - fondly referrerd to as something like ‘Old Flo’
At one time I attempted to follow this up via the Local History Library and learned that in the 1990s it had been sent on loan, I think to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park or Henry Moore Foundation up North.
As I assume it was originally commissioned or gifted to Tower Hamlets ( by whom and to commemorate what?), I am wondering why it is still on loan and not in its rightful place somewhere in the borough? I seem to remember some comment about its value/ risk of damage in which case I feel at least Tower Hamlets is owed a less valuable cast of the original. Surely we did not lend it permanently to Yorkshire? Perhaps it was only temporaily placed in the East End and why Jamaica Road?
I often think of it when driving down Jamaica Road and it seems to have been a forgotten piece of recent local history. Could you please research/ investigate and let me (and others via an article with photo?) know why it is no longer a part of the Tower Hamlets public art scene?
Thanks.
Deryn Hall
I’d forgotten this one … can anyone shed any light? JR
February 17th, 2009 at 7:00 pm
There were a number of large public sculptures - within the series “Mother and Child” - placed around Stepney, commissioned by the Arts Council, from Hepworth and Moore - I think for the Festival of Britain in 1951. They may have originally been in Battersea Park. The series recalls Moore’s war time drawings of families sleeping in Bethnal Green tube station.
Most seem to have been replaced by replicas in the 1970s; and from then began to suffer from excessive vandalism.
I’m not sure where the originals - or even the copies - ended up; but the Museum of London did an exhibition of the FoB a couple of years ago, and you might follow up enquiries there.