The Minton St. George Fountain

It's really rather sad that the finest piece of majolica that ever existed is lost forever. Built in 1862, it charmed viewers for 64 years before the English climate, pollution and neglect took their toll, demanding its dismantling. 

The St. George Fountain, created for the 1862 London Exhibition was the ultimate majolica creation. Modeled by sculptor John Thomas for Minton, the fountain was made of majolica and stone and stood 39 feet tall and 36 feet in diameter. It was made of 369 separate parts, carefully assembled in London's Exhibition Hall court over a period of two months, covering 1521 square feet of floor space.

The top piece was a sculpture of St. George slaying a dragon. This figure was supported by four winged victories holding crowns of laurel wreaths around the main support column inscribed with the motto: "For England and For Victory."

Below this were four alternating smaller fountains of grouped griffins holding basins alternating with four lions holding coats of arms.

Beneath and surrounding the main tower of the fountain, were four figures with fish tails holding shells above their heads, each kneeling in a shell held aloft by herons. This part of the design was originally created a few years earlier for use in the Royal Dairy, shown below, and was repeated in the St. George piece.

Heron fountain from the Minton pattern books

Surrounding the entire piece was a pool decorated by wreaths of oak leaves and acorns, punctuated by roses of England, divided by six vases of flowers. The basin circulated 7,000 gallons of perfumed water each hour, filling the exhibition hall with fragrance.

It must have been quite a sensory experience!

St. George and the dragon

Part of the motto “For England and for Victory”

Close up of the griffin basins and the lions

Monumental vases with palms

Color chromolithograph of the fountain from the front

Considering how long it stood, there are remarkably few images of it outside of the Crystal Palace. Those we have in color are all chromolithographs from the period. Almost all the photos are from stereocards from the exhibition itself.

 

At the close of the exhibition in 1863 it was donated by Minton to the South Kensington Museum. It was moved to the Kensington Horticultural gardens where it stood for nine years before being moved again to the Bethnal Green Museum Department of Science and Art in 1872. There it occupied the front courtyard of the Museum.

As early as the turn of the century, traffic and pollution in the area began to take their toll on the fountain and it began to break apart. After years of neglect the St. George statue fell from the top during a storm.

Though once a part of the V&A museum collection, changing fashion dictated that it was not worth saving for future generations. At the encouragement of Queen Mary who considered it an eyesore, the remainder was allowed to deteriorate until it was dismantled in 1926. 

A researcher provided me with the following account of the events leading up to the destruction of the fountain: 

"There’s ... a splendidly interesting set of documents about the fountain’s removal in the Board of Works records in the National Archive at Kew in London.  The Board was completely baffled that the local people of Bethnal Green might prefer the fountain to the nice flowerbed they were proposing to replace it with.  They met (and were harangued by) a delegation of locals, including the local MP.  There’s even a transcript of the delegation’s arguments among the records.   In the end the Board persuaded the V&A to give the local borough surveyor permission to salvage what he could of the fountain to use elsewhere in the borough.  I’ve tried to trace the surviving pieces further, but haven’t succeeded.  The borough surveyor’s descendants think he used some of it in the decoration of York Hall in Bethnal Green, but I’ve not found anything to confirm it.”

A few pieces of the St. George fountain were sold off in parts. What was left was crushed and incorporated into the flowerbed and the paving of the roadway in front of the museum.

It was a grand and glorious thing, now gone. 

As an 1862 news account stated, "If there were no other object in the building but this grand work alone, it would be well worth a shilling entrance to see it."