Drinking fountain in Promenade Gardens

Decorative drinking fountain, approximately 1898, by Walter MacFarlane and Company of Saracen Foundry, Glasgow.

MATERIALS: cast-iron on a sandstone base.

DESCRIPTION: this is an example of Walter Macfarlane and Company’s drinking fountain design number 18. It stands on a two-stepped octagonal stone base, and itself stands 1.8m tall. The foot is X-shaped, with a central circular shaft, ornamented with water lilies. Around this four jambs, each with a single lion’s foot and a lion’s head, support a quatrefoil basin. The jambs are linked by straps decorated with rosettes. The underside of the basin is decorated with flowers, probably poppies, and its rim has palmette decoration. Rising from the centre is a tapering stanchion with four concave sides at its base. Above swan-neck scrolls are taps (broken on the south and missing on the west and east). Above these the sides are convex and decorated with swans on the east and west and cranes or herons on the north and south. Foliate decoration adorns the angles between the sides. The kylix-shaped (a kylix being a type of Classical Greek wine-drinking cup) vase terminal has four projecting arms like leafy tendrils; the drinking cups suspended by chains are missing. A small trough for dogs is located between the feet on the east side. In 2019 the fountain was not operational.