This is NOT my thread on the Rick Steves travel forum, but it piqued my interest so I thought I’d ask here.
Summary: someone has a photo taken in 1918 that says “England” on the back. The photo is of a man kneeling in front of a statue/memorial type thing that has a winged creature on top. The OP described it as a dragon but a few respondents think it looks more like a goose or swan. The OP hopes to figure out where the photo was taken.
The artistic style reminds me more of the eagle in the Great Seal of the United States as it was depicted in the middle to late Nineteenth Century. Perhaps the tomb of an ambassador, or some rich American who moved to England in the Gilded Age?
Damn, that’s a disturbing bird! Regardless of the species, it looks like it’s been already partially plucked and is now screaming in pain! Who would make a monument like that?
More to the point, who would want to be photographed in front of it?
Does anyone else think that the clothing style (short sleeved shirt) looks too modern for 1918?
And that’s a very untended-looking graveyard, if that’s what it is. Of course I can understand anyone’s reluctance to get near that statue!
I don’t think that’s a graveyard. There seems to be some kind of mixed planted border in front of the subject, overgrown and probably neglected. My guess is that this is corner of a seriously neglected or completely abandoned formal garden, ornamented with statuary.
The weird encrustations on the statue may be stylistic. There was at one time a fashion for baroque “grottos” which were ornamented in this way - have a look here - and the air of neglect and decay may have appealed so somebody’s nineteenth-century romantic sensibility. That would also tie in with the mythical beast on the top.
I am still unsure (and zooming the photo doesn’t help) whether we are looking at:
A bird with wings outstretched, and long neck extended to the front-right, with mouth open
A bird with wings outstretched, and head/neck in a bent-forward position (or something), with a feature on the front of the right wing that merely happens to look like an outstretched neck - sort of like the mirror image of this picture
Is the feature that looks like a long neck and an open mouth actually that?
Looks like a Basilisk to me (There’s a great deal of overlap between basilisks and cockatrices – they’re almost identical). Looking up “Basilisk statue” brings up a lot of similar statues, but not the one you link to
There was a statute that looked much like that one on the grounds of Highcliffe Castle in Dorset. I can’t imagine the castle grounds were ever left untended like that but maybe the National Trust hadn’t taken it over in 1918.
Harry Selfridge (of department store fame) lived there at that time. I know the castle well - my wife has relatives who live just round the corner (not in a castle, sadly).
That’s right! I forgot Highcliffe was “the Selfridge place.” I’m from Dorset (technically from Yeovil across the border) so I went to Highcliffe a lot when I was a kid.
