The Romsey R 2016–18
The Romsey R is a 3 metre high sculpture in steel and bronze
sited at a key location in the Romsey district of Cambridge.
It references the past and the future of a neighbourhood closely associated with the railway, both through its structure and its typographic content, listing the departure and destination stations of nearly a hundred key journeys in the lives of local residents.
It was designed both to celebrate local identity and to provide a placemaking focal point, as a landmark and point of orientation.
Description
The sculpture celebrates the railway heritage of Romsey Town. The sculptural ‘R’ is a Clarendon letter derived from a rubbing of a nearby Victorian street sign. Within this shape, bronze ‘sleepers’ list the departure-points and destinations of railway journeys that have been important in the lives of local residents of all ages. These range from the local to the international, and show the diversity of geographical background characteristic of the Romsey district.
The station names are cast in a font specially designed for the project by Will Hill and named ‘Romsey Railway’.
Development
The project was developed in response to a brief from Cambridge Council.
The Romsey district is historically associated with the railways, since it was developed in the nineteenth century to provide homes for railway workers.
The project is designed to position this heritage in relation to the vibrant and culturally diverse community that has developed from it, whose participation we invited in these terms:
‘We are inviting local residents to be part of a major public art project which celebrates the people and history of Romsey. Almost everyone has a rail journey that was important for them. It might be the first train journey you remember from childhood, or a journey to a new home or job, a journey associated with a particular relationship or a major event in your life. It might be a short trip to the nearest town, or a journey that crossed the borders of countries or continents. We would like to collect and commemorate your journeys.’
Helen Weinstein of Historyworks provided invaluable support in gathering journey information from local schoolchildren and organising related public events.
Harry Gray
I was really excited to take Will's concept and make it into a piece of sculpture. From the outset I wanted the shape and structure of the R to relate to the railway subject as closely as possible. I wanted to develop a piece that was formed of the same language of sleepers and tracks we know so well from our Railway experiences.
I started by taking a rubbing from a capital R from a nearby Victorian cast metal Romsey street sign. This gave me the form.
I designed a steel framework for two R shapes that refers to the railway track and solid cast station name plaques that refer to sleepers. These make up the body of the letter.
Cast in bronze the ‘sleepers’ also relate to the historic metal station names that we still see today. A full size wooden model was made with David White to arrive at the correct scale and to test on site for position.
Charles Tallack, the engineer for the project, is also a member of the Mackay family who own the eponymous Cambridge metal workshop and ironmongers. He took a keen interest in the structure of the R and designed a creative way of fixing the sleepers and track that mimics actual railway sleeper ‘cleats’. Finch Seaman Enfield at Braintree used the same sand casting techniques to make the bronze sleeper plaques that were used in the past to make railway engine blocks. The sculpture was built by Harrington Fabrication, who had the difficult task of bending the thick steel ‘track’ framework into precise curves before adding the bronze plaques that connect the track to make the two R shapes. I fettled and patinated each of the plaques by hand. The giant concrete bases for each R were cast by Zion landscapes.
It is increasingly difficult to find expertise in traditional ways of working metal and we were fortunate to have such highly skilled collaborators.
Will Hill
The font designed for this project is based upon the English vernacular block-letter, a signwriter’s idiom which inspired Edward Johnson’s London Underground lettering and later Eric Gill’s Gill Sans typeface, which also has strong associations with the English railway networks. In this project however it was also necessary to consider the accents and special characters necessary for setting names from a variety of different languages such as Jaworzyna Sląska
The departure points and destinations varied widely in length, which determined complex decisions over which were placed in which parts of the letter
Apart from being a long-time Romsey resident I have a personal affinity for the subject, as my grandfather worked for the Great Western Railway, a connection that is also referenced in the journey details submitted by my son George: from Paddington to Penzance. (the home of his railway great-grandfather).
The artwork was officially unveiled on December 3rd 2018 at the Mill Road Winter Fair by the Mayor of Cambridge, Cllr Nigel Gawthrope, and Cllr Anna Smith, Deputy Leader of the Council.
At the unveiling ceremony, Will said:
“The railway was an amazing 19th century idea. Like some of the best great ideas, it is a network; something that linked people, opened up possibilities and changed lives. We are a railway nation, and train journeys are part of the human stories that make up our culture and map our aspirations. The legacy of the railway workers, navvies, engineers and station staff who were the district’s first inhabitants, continues in the scope and mobility of a vibrant neighbourhood.
The sculpture looks back onto our history, but it’s also a ‘looking-forward’. Many of the journeys it documents, were taken by children who are still in school. Others came from people who have lived in Romsey all their working lives”
We viewed the commission as a place-making project; creating an orientation-point that people would come to use in describing their road as ‘the second turning after the R’ or agreeing to meet ‘by the R’.
Response to the artwork has been overwhelmingly positive. It was noticeable that the narratives of the journey stations serve to draw the audience in, to view their own journeys or place-names that are familiar to them.
‘The R’ is already being identified as a rendezvous-point for local events.
