Sculpture: Stock exchange war memorial - St Michael & St George
War Memorial
Thomas Brock: Forgotten Sculptor of the Victoria Memorial provides a photo of the St Michael and St George statues that were originally part of the memorial. The text says: "The figure of St Michael is one of the best pieces of modelling that ever came from his {Thomas Brock's} studio." The photo is captioned: "St Michael and St George unveiled as part of the Stock Exchange War Memorial 1922: now at One Osnaburgh Street, London."
Behind St Michael can be seen a foundation stone unveiled by the Queen Mother in 1967. This indicates that the building with the green marble hallway was built in 1967. We can find no such building in Osnaburgh Street so it has probably been demolished.
St Saviour's Hospital was at the southern end of Osnaburgh Street and was closed in 1962. We wonder if this was the site visited by the Queen Mother 5 years later.
Site: Stock Exchange WW1 memorial (2 memorials)
EC4, Rose Street, Stock Exchange building, Paternoster Square
Our photo shows the war memorial taking the place of the second window from the left, with the laurel wreath low down near the ground; Temple Bar is in the background, with St Pauls beyond that.
The memorial does not identify the "house" but it's the London Stock Exchange. It's their building and there is a small, unimpressive, crest at the top right of the memorial with their motto "dictum meum pactum" (my word is my bond).
Roll of Honour gives the Order of Service for the day the original memorial was unveiled. This includes 408 names, including some information and images of many of the men.
On 27th October 1922 the Stock Exchange War memorial was unveiled on the western wall of the Capel Court Stock Exchange building. Images of the exterior of this building in Capel Court show no evidence, or space, for a large memorial so we think it was probably on the interior of this wall. It was unveiled by The Earl of Balfour, Arthur James Balfour, who had been Prime Minister 1902-5. When the Stock Exchange moved to the Stock Exchange Tower the memorial was placed on the Throgmorton side of that building.
In 2004 when the Stock Exchange Tower was vacated it was decided that it was not possible to move the memorial to the new Paternoster Square building so a new memorial was created, designed by Eric Parry Architects, incorporating the bronze wreath from the original memorial. The Stock Exchange Tower was demolished and we don't know what happened to the original memorial.
We've failed to find an image of the original memorial but the IWM gives the creators as: Sir Aston Webb & Sons (architect) and Sir Thomas Brock (sculptor), and we did find a photo of the associated sculptures.
We had probably walked past this memorial a number of times and not recognised it as being anything other than a dark window. So we thank Nigel Hilton who drew our attention to it in 2021.
