Wellington Column

The Wellington Column is a Grade II* listed monument located on William Brown Street, built between 1861 and 1863 by Andrew Lawson of Edinburgh, who won a design competition in 1856. The construction was delayed until a suitable site was found. This monument features a sandstone fluted Doric column with a pedestal base, set upon granite steps, and topped with a bronze statue of the Duke of Wellington, created by George Anderson Lawson, Andrew's brother. The overall height of the monument is 132 feet (40 meters). The pedestal includes bronze plaques that display the names of Wellington’s victories, and on the south side, there is a relief depicting the charge at the Battle of Waterloo, also by George Anderson Lawson, which was installed in 1865.

Historically, the Wellington Column served as a prominent site for outdoor meetings by the Liverpool branch of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), a militant suffrage organization founded in Manchester by Emmeline Pankhurst and others in 1903. The WSPU utilized the column from 1907 until 1914 for their campaigns, which were suspended at the onset of the First World War. Notable suffragette speakers at the column included Patricia Woodlock, Liverpool’s most prolific suffragette prisoner, and Alice Morrissey, a founding member of the WSPU and the wife of Liverpool’s first elected socialist. The listing was amended in 2018 as part of the centenary commemorations of the 1918 Representation of the People Act.