Melville's Monument, St Andrew Square, Edinburgh

Melville's Monument

William Burn designed this tall commemorative monument, erected between 1821 and 1823, to honour Henry Dundas, First Viscount Melville (1742–1811). It stands prominently in the centre of St Andrew Square, Edinburgh.

The monument takes the form of a fluted Doric column, over 150 feet tall, built from polished Culallo sandstone. It is partly modelled on Trajan's Column in Rome. The column stands on a cubic pedestal with eagles at each corner, and features a laurel wreath base and an egg and dart torus at the capital. An internal spiral stair with a doorway on the west side of the pedestal allows access within the column.

Above the column sits a circular drum pedestal supporting a 15-foot-tall statue of Henry Dundas, designed by English sculptor Francis Chantrey and carved by Robert Forrest of Carluke. The statue depicts Dundas standing in the robes of a peer with his left hand to his chest, facing west along George Street. The statue was added to the column in 1827, several years after the column itself was completed.

The square is enclosed by a low boundary wall of saddleback ashlar footings with metal railings. These railings, designed by architect Leslie Grahame Thomson, were installed in 1947 to replace earlier railings that had been removed during the Second World War.

Historical Context

Henry Dundas died in 1811 after a long career in Scottish and British politics. In 1817, a committee was established to raise funds and oversee construction of a national monument to his memory. The project involved considerable negotiations over site, cost, and style. Several locations were considered, including Calton Hill, the top of Leith Walk, and Melville Street in the West End, before a plot in St Andrew Square became available through negotiations between the committee and the City of Edinburgh. Burn submitted his design for approval to the Dean of Guild in February 1821, and a warrant was granted on 5 April 1821.

The monument was funded through the Royal Navy, with subscriptions raised mainly by naval officers as tribute to Dundas for his services as Treasurer of the Navy in protecting British sailors. Construction of the column took place from 1821 to 1823 and was carried out by William Armstrong of Edinburgh, with Robert Stevenson as consulting engineer. Stevenson finalised the foundations and column dimensions and superintended the build. The column was erected using an iron-balance crane, a technology pioneered for the Bell Rock Lighthouse in Angus.

Francis Chantrey's statue design resembled his earlier marble statue of Dundas installed in 1818 at Edinburgh's Parliament House. Robert Forrest, a stone mason and sculptor, executed the carving. The completed monument was drawn by Thomas H. Shepherd and featured in the 1829 volume "Modern Athens, Displayed in a Series of Views".

In 1866, architect John Dick Peddie was appointed to design new railings and a boundary wall for St Andrew Square to replace earlier structures that had deteriorated. The 19th-century railings were removed during the Second World War as part of the war effort and replaced in 1947 with railings to Leslie Grahame Thomson's design, which match railings at Charlotte Square.

In 2008, the layout of St Andrew Square was redesigned by Gillespies as a public space improvement project, during which the 1947 railings and boundary wall remained in place as part of the square's long tradition of enclosure. The Melville Monument itself was restored in 2008 as part of the Twelve Monuments Project, a joint initiative of Edinburgh World Heritage and the City of Edinburgh Council.

In 2021, the City of Edinburgh Council fixed a brass information plaque to the north elevation of the pedestal following a campaign begun in 2015 by human rights activists Adam Ramsay and Professor Sir Geoff Palmer to provide more detailed historical context about Henry Dundas and his connections to the slave trade. The monument has become a focus of public debate about Britain's colonial past, particularly following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020.