Joy Ride is a Grade II listed building in the Stevenage local planning authority area, England. First listed on 15 April 1998. Sculpture.
Joy Ride
- WRENN ID
- gilded-chancel-sedge
- Grade
- II
- Local Planning Authority
- Stevenage
- Constituency
- Stevenage MP: Kevin Bonavia (Lab)
- Country
- England
- Date first listed
- 15 April 1998
- Type
- Sculpture
- Address
- Joy Ride, Central Square
- OS grid reference
- TL 237 240
- Coordinates
- 51.90163, -0.20205
- Source
- Historic England listing
Description
Joy Ride is a sculpture created by Franta Belsky between 1958 and 1959. It features a bronze mother and child on a circular stone plinth, with the mother carrying her little boy on her back. The design of the mother figure is notable for the way her dress and skin are integrated into a single, tensile form.
Franta Belsky, who was born in 1921, came to Britain from Bmo, Czechoslovakia, in 1938. He studied at the Royal College of Art while also serving in the military. Although he is recognized for both his portrait work and public sculptures, it was with Joy Ride and an earlier piece called Lesson, created in 1956, that he reached artistic maturity. Belsky was commissioned by the Stevenage Development Corporation to create a symbolic piece for the newly established New Town, inspired by the use of symbolic sculpture in the reconstruction of bombed Rotterdam. The figures represent the arrival of a new generation in this New Town.
The sculpture's vertical composition, with a high center of interest, is designed to fit its location atop a platform flanked by stairs and railings, overlooking a carefully preserved group of trees below. Joy Ride is considered one of Belsky's most distinctive works, specifically crafted for this prominent setting.
Local climate
Joy Ride sits in a drier-than-average part of the UK, with an average of 720 mm of rain a year. This makes it drier than 84% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is lower than that of 77% of listed buildings.
It experiences an average of 36 freeze-thaw cycles a year, more than 61% of listed buildings. Of these, 17 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.3°C per decade since 1991.
Averages for 1991–2020; temperature trend 1991–2025. Figures describe the wider area (a grid cell of roughly 10 km), not the individual site. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.
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- No EPC on record for this property
- No sale records on file
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- Detailed attributes — period, style, materials, features
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