Is Neptune too big for his pants? (From The Northern Echo)

Is Neptune too big for his pants?

10:56am Saturday 14th November 2009

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HIS long locks flowing, his beard billowing, his muscles rippling – Neptune is an all-action hero as he skewers with his trident the dolphin trapped beneath his feet. The mighty fish wriggles in desperation, a piercing shriek coming out from its gaping, tooth-lined mouth.

And yet it is all as lifeless as lead.

Neptune is the second of the controversial statues in Durham’s Market Place. He’s overshadowed by Lord Londonderry on the other plinth, who has been struggling to control his horse since 1861. But Neptune, the Roman god of the sea, has been in situ since 1729.

He was the gift of George Bowes, of Gibside and Streatlam, near Barnard Castle. George had the good fortune to lose both his elder brothers when young and, aged 21 in 1722, unexpectedly inherited the family estates.

He quit the army and married his 14-yearold beloved. Poor thing, she died soon after and his mother wrote a curious epitaph: “Hail happy bride, for thou art truly blest! Three months of rapture, crown’d with endless rest.”

The widower devoted himself to exploiting his coal seams. In 1726, he founded the Grand Alliance – a coalowners’ co-operative. Their first achievement was Causey Arch, near Stanley, the world’s oldest surviving railway bridge, over which horses pulled their coaltrucks to the River Tyne.

In 1727, George was elected MP for County Durham, and he proposed turning the city into a seaport. One plan was to dig a canal north to the River Team which flows into the Tyne; another was to deepen and straighten the Wear so colliers could sail from Durham to Sunderland and thence London. Neither came to fruition, but to remind Durham of its dock-ish dreams, he presented Neptune to sit on top of a drinking well, or pant.

Andries Carpentiere, assistant to the acclaimed Flemish sculptor John van Nost, is the most likely creator. He was “the most prominent lead sculpture manufacturer in England” and has statues at Castle Howard and Studley Royal.

The failure of the canal plans did not hole George’s wealth-making schemes. When he died in 1760, having sunk a fortune into Gibside, he was worth at least £600,000 – about £90.8m today, according to the Bank of England’s inflation calculator.

His only child and heir was Mary Eleanor, the scandalously “unhappy countess” who married “the worst husband in Georgian England”, Andrew Robinson Stoney Bowes.

George’s other descendants include his great-grandson, John, founder of the Bowes Museum, and his great-great-great-greatgranddaughter, Elizabeth, the Queen.

Plus Neptune. He topped a series of increasingly elaborate drinking wells in the Market Place until 1923 when, surrounded by streetlights, he was deemed a traffic hazard which had grown too big for his pants.

He was moved to Wharton Park where vandals smashed him up and God struck him down with a bolt of lightning in 1979. He underwent a £10,000 restoration in Shropshire, and returned to Durham to be plonked in a gas showroom window in Claypath.

On May 16, 1991, after an absence of 68 years, he was placed on a £15,000 plinth within yards of the spot he had graced for 194 years. “Neptune’s back to rule the Market Place”, said the Echo’s headline.

His reign continues, although after 280 years he has yet to deliver the fatal blow to the dolphin. But still it screams, a great yelp of pain – although that might be because this week the current generation agreed to sideline them both to the shadows of the square.

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