St Thomas à Becket sculpture

'St Thomas à Becket', a fibreglass resin statue of 1970-71, by E Bainbridge Copnall, installed in St Paul’s Cathedral Churchyard in 1973.

The statue is of fibreglass resin with a bronzed finish, and at 2.45m long and 1.3m high is over life size. It is mounted on a stepped stone base 22cm in height; at the foot of the base is a plaque reading ‘BECKET / BY/ BAINBRIDGE COPNALL / ACQUIRED BY THE CORPORATION OF LONDON /1973’. The figurative sculpture depicts the prostrate figure of St Thomas à Becket at the moment of his martyrdom in the choir of Canterbury Cathedral. The posture has been compared to still photographs from the production of TS Eliot’s play 'Murder in the Cathedral', staged in Canterbury Cathedral in 1970 (Ward-Jackson 2003, 388). The head is thrown back and the hands are extended as if to ward off the blows of his assassins, and the face is vigorously rendered with an elongated chin, pointed nose and lentoid eyes with heavy eyelids. To the flowing drapery of the gown, Patrick Crouch added a hood in his restoration to increase the stability of the sculpture.