HISTORIC RELICS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 140, 15 June 1935, Page 7 (Supplement)

HISTORIC RELICS.

FLEET STREET'S CLOCK,

A QUEEN'S WANDERINGS.

The tide of indifference which has swept so many historical relics out of London would now seem to be on the turn, and it is not too much to expect that in the next few years we may see some of these treasures restored to their original home, if not to their original sites, states a writer in a'London contemporary. In the little town of Swanage, in Dorset, you may see the facade of the ball of the Mercers' Company and the clock tower, which was removed from London Bridge, where it had served as a memorial to the Duke of Wellington. There is little hope of getting these back again, but other and less ponderous treasures may be recovered. Lord Ivothermere has set a splendid example in this respect by offering to send back to Fleet Street the famous clock which until about a hundred years ago stood or hung outside St. Dun-st-n's Church, Fleet Street. The two striking wooden giants will come with the ancient timepiece. It is said that the Lord Hertford of his day was fascinated by the clock when he was a boy, and bought it when opportunity offered, and .transferred it to St. Dunstan's, his house at Regent Park.

The clock will be in good company. Close at hand, in a niche over the vestry door of St. Dunstan's, is the statute of Queen Elizabeth, another wanderer returned. Originally Her Majesty formed part of the ornamentation of Lud Gate, and when that was demolished the efligy was given to Sir Francis Gosling, who fixed it at the east end of St. Dunstan's. The church in turn was demolished, and the Queen disappeared, to be found many years afterwards in the cellar of a neighbouring house. Now she has returned and seems likely to stay.

None of the Royal statues in London has suffered a more unhappy fate than that of King Charles I. at Whitehall, and fortunate it is that there is any statue at all. At the outbreak of the Civil War it fell into the hands of the Roundheads, and eventually into the keeping of John Rivett, a brazier, who produced some broken pieces of brass, in proof of his having carried out the conditions of the sale that he would break up tho statue, and actually sold to the Cavaliers the handles of knives and forks made from the Royal metal. And all the time King Charles was lying buried in a garden, awaiting the time for the wily Rivett to dig him up and make a double profit on the Royal martyr.

. There are other relics and memorials which have "come back"—that noble statue of King James 11. by Grinling Gibbons, which was in grave danger of final disappearance during a recent coronation; the statue of King George 11. in Golden Square, which had its original home at Canons, near Edgware, and the statue of Brunei, which lay for many moons in a Government store, until it found its present resting place on the Thames Embankment.