Statues - Hither & Thither |
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Llansannan
Conwy Wales A544 |
Statue of the Little Girl - Cerflun y Ferch Fach"The Memory of the Kymric Dead" |
W. Goscombe John
1899 |
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tvdvr aled william salesbvry
henry rees
gwilym hiraethog
iorwerth glan aled |
Signed: (almost unreadable, but obviously:) w. goscombe john 1899
The Memory of the Kymric DeadThe writer had right on suggesting Thomas Ellis will get his own statue, it is erected in Bala in 1903. "The Memory of the Kymric Dead" is the title of Ellis's famous lecture at Bangor in 1892.
The little village of Llansannan, in the county of Denbigh, will to-morrow (said the Manchester Guardian on Monday) be the scene of a ceremony of a character that is all too rare in Wales. A monument erected in memory of five eminent Welshmen born in the neighbourhood will be unveiled, with all the circumstance which an enterprising local committee can command. It is Bad, however, to think that the one man to whom above all the idea of the Llansannan Memorial is due will not be there to grace the occasion. Although it is Mr H. E. Kearley, M.P., a resident on the slopes of Mount Hiraethog, who gave Mr Goscombe John the commission to execute the monument, it was the late Mr Thomas Ellis who originally suggested its erection. To him "the memory of the Kymric dead" — to quote the title of one of his public addresses — was an inspiration and a passion. He never tired of exhorting his countrymen to do all they could to perpetuate the memory of their great dead, and no one deplored more than he the poverty of Wales in public monuments. Now that he himself is of the number of those "Kymric dead" whose name and work live after them, it is to be hoped that some portion of the fund which is now being raised for a memorial of him will be devoted to the erection of a statue near his home. He himself, one may be permitted to believe and to say, would have liked it. The five worthies whose memory will be honoured at Llansannan, to-morrow, are, with one exception, men whose fame is strictly confined to Wales and Welshmen. Three of them were preachers and three were poets, but they preached and sang alike in Welsh, and in Welsh only The exception is William Salesbury, the translator of the New Testament into Welsh. …Mr John has not attempted anything in the way of portraiture, but has chosen instead the simple figure of a little Welsh girl in Welsh costume, seated on a pedestal of stone, and engaged in making a wreath of flowers. It is supposed to be typical of Welsh rural life, and is said by those who saw it unveiled on Tuesday to make an exquisite picture.
The monument stands on a plot of grass at a point where the road forks. The ceremony was, by rare good fortune, favoured with comparatively fine weather. The draperies which veiled Mr John's work were released by Mrs Herbert Roberts, and a public meeting was then held in an adjoining field.
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