The South Bank Lion.

On the southern approach to Westminster Bridge stands the South Bank Lion. I often wondered, as I travelled over Westminster Bridge on a No 12 bus... why? Who or what does it commemorate? How old is it? For it looks new, hardly worn at all. Yet it was standing there before I was born, and was already well over a hundred years old then. For this is no ordinary stone lion but a piece of remarkably resilient pottery, fired in a kiln and over a century and a half old.

 In 1769 Eleanor Coade set up her ‘Lithodipyra Manufactury’ on the site of the present Royal Festival Hall, taking over a factory and improving on the artificial stone that was made there using a secret formula. Eleanor Coade’s “Manufactury” created the most weatherproof stone ever made. It was used for statues and decoration on a number of buildings including the Norwegian Embassy, the National Gallery, the Royal Opera House, Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey and St Paul’s. Coade Stone memorials and tombs were also used to immortalise people including Captain Bligh. Whose memorial can also been seen nearby in the churchyard of St Mary’s at Lambeth, (also know as the Museum of Garden History), on the south or east side of Lambeth Bridge.  

The 13-ton lion was one of two originally made to stand above Lion Brewery near Hungerford Bridge and coloured red. The lions survived the Second World War, when the Lion Brewery was blitzed. One was moved to Westminster Bridge in 1951 as part of the Festival of Britain, the other went to the Rugby Union Football ground at Twickenham. After the Festival our lion was moved to the entrance of Waterloo Station, but returned to its present home in 1966 when the station entrance was remodelled. 

This is a particularly apt spot being roughly on the site of a gallery opened by Eleanor Coade in 1799 to display over 1,000 examples of Coade stone. Our Lion, whose paw carries a date of 1837 and the initials of its designer William Woodington, was, when moved from the top of the brewery, found to have a time capsule in a recess in it’s back containing two William IV coins.  

The factory closed in 1840 and the formula was lost. The ingredients of Coade Stone have been analysed and, from the name given to the process, people have worked out that the process involved firing the mix twice, for days at a time, at temperatures high, enough to almost liquefy the stone. (“Lithodipyra” is a composite of the Greek words for stone, twice, and fire.) 

The true secret of its perfection and durability, however, lies buried with its creator. Eleanor Coade, whose factory was responsible for so many memorials, asked only that she be buried in a “decent and frugal manner” and lies in her unmarked grave at Bunhill Fields. So the South Bank Lion, made in a way we cannot replicate today, represents, for me, that we should never underestimate those great people of the past. 

 Laurie Smith