Statue of Sir Winston Churchill

Statue of Sir Winston Churchill

A bronze statue of Sir Winston Churchill installed in Parliament Square in 1973, designed and sculpted by Ivor Roberts-Jones.

The statue stands on the north-east corner of Parliament Square, positioned opposite one of the main entrances to the Palace of Westminster. It depicts Churchill as a powerful, stocky figure wearing a naval overcoat, leaning informally on a stick, and gazing somewhat defiantly towards the Houses of Parliament. The figure stands 12 feet (3.66 metres) high, making it markedly over life-size. It rests on a white stone plinth roughly square in shape and standing 8 feet (2.44 metres) high. The word "CHURCHILL" is carved in an elegant serif font along the top front edge of the plinth. The bronze has developed a dark patina.

Parliament Square itself was cleared in the early 19th century under an Act of 1806 to provide an appropriate setting for the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey. Sir Charles Barry redesigned the area in 1868, creating a central enclosure with a green strip to the west. The current arrangement of lawn, formal paved walks, seats and trees on the north and west sides dates from 1949-50, when improvements were made in preparation for the Festival of Britain. This design, by George Grey Wornum (1888-1957), won the RIBA Gold Medal in 1949-50. Parliament Square is registered as a historic park and garden at Grade II.

The Churchill statue was commissioned in 1971 and installed in 1973. Ivor Roberts-Jones (1913-96) was a Welsh sculptor who trained at Goldsmith's College of Art and the Royal Academy Schools in the 1930s. After war service in Burma, he returned to London to teach and pursue figurative sculpture, holding his first solo exhibition in 1953. Early commissions included a half life-size bronze of St Francis for the Lady Chapel at Ardleigh Church, Essex (1955), and portrait heads of Somerset Maugham for Lord Beaverbrook (1961) and Paul Claudel (1960, purchased by the Tate Gallery). The Welsh Arts Council organised a travelling exhibition of his work in 1961. His first full-scale commission was a figure of Augustus John, completed in 1967 and installed at Fordingbridge, Hampshire, where the painter had lived and died. This work led to his election as an associate of the Royal Academy in 1969. He was appointed Head of the Sculpture Department at Goldsmiths in 1964, a position he held until 1978. While heading the department, the Royal Fine Arts Commission asked him to undertake the Churchill commission, carried out between 1970 and 1973. Roberts-Jones was elected a Royal Academician in 1973 and made a CBE in 1975. He later received a further commission for a Winston Churchill monument in New Orleans in 1977.

Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965) was Britain's wartime Prime Minister from 1940 to 1945. During this period he became an immediately recognisable figure embodying the determination he fostered in the nation, known for his stocky build, baldness and slight stoop, and for carefully chosen public props such as siren suits and cigars. At the end of the war his popularity with the electorate had diminished, and he was voted out of office in 1945. He returned as Prime Minister in 1951 but was by then too old to serve effectively and gave way to Anthony Eden. He remained an Member of Parliament until 1964 when he finally stood down. He died a few months later at the age of 90. His state funeral was the first accorded to a commoner since that of Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, in 1852.