The Albert Memorial: Decoding The Details

If you have ever walked along the Southern edge of Kensington Gardens, you will have not been able to miss The Albert Memorial.

An exuberant Victorian display of commemoration, it has got to be the most elaborate memorial, to one man, in all of London. It depicts a 14ft statue of Prince Albert, seated in an ornate canopy, topped by a spire that reaches up to 176ft high. This is then surrounded by an intricate series of nearly 200 allegorical sculptures and statues. 

Let’s take a closer look at some of those little details, to decode this monumental display. 

Love And Loss

Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were married on the 10th February 1840, in the Chapel Royal of St James’s Palace. 

It was an intense union of passion and deep love. They became inseparable and had nine children together.

Prince Albert was involved in various areas of social reform, arts and science. He is probably best known for assisting in conceiving and organising the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park in 1851. The profits from the exhibition then went on to fund the development of a hub for arts, science and education in South Kensington, including the Natural History Museum, Science Museum, Imperial College London and the Royal Albert Hall. This area subsequently became known as ‘Albertopolis’ in his honour. 

Albert died on the 14th December 1861, aged 42, from Typhoid. Utterly bereft, Queen Victoria went into mourning and wore black for the rest of her life. Shortly after he died, she commissioned a great monument to be erected in his honour. 

Design And Construction

A competition was held for the design, with seven designs submitted, including a large obelisk and an equestrian statue of Albert. Victoria chose the design submitted by Gothic-Revival architect George Gilbert Scott, who is also best known for designing St Pancras Station and the Midland Grand Hotel and the Foreign and Colonial Office. 

Construction began in 1864, funded by a £50,000 grant from Parliament and public subscriptions. The total cost come to £120,000. The site chosen is at the North pinnacle of ‘Albertopolis’. If you drew a straight line today, more or less South, from the memorial, you would enter the entranceway of the Royal Albert Hall, through the Royal College of Music, Science Museum, right up to the central door of the Natural History Museum.

Queen Victoria unveiled the memorial in 1872, although the statue of Albert was finally ‘seated’ and positioned in 1876.

The Statue

The 14ft, gilded gold statue was initially designed by Baron Carlo Marochetti. Marochetti died, however, in 1867 and J. H. Foley stepped in to complete the job. Albert is dressed as a Knight of the Garter and he holds in his hand a catalogue of the Great Exhibition. 

The canopy And Spire

Prince Albert is seated inside a gothic-style canopy, topped by a spire. This design was partly based on the Eleanor Crosses, erected in the 13th century by King Edward I on the death of his wife Queen Eleanor of Castile.

There is a Victorian replica outside Charing Cross station. The original stood where the Charles I statue is today, by Trafalgar Square and was destroyed in the civil war.

Going up the spire are a series of sculptures. Firstly, on the corners are eight allegorical figures representing the useful arts and sciences: chemistry, geometry, geology, astronomy, rhetoric, physiology, medicine and philosophy.

Above these are a series of mosaics and between them the words: ‘QUEEN VICTORIA AND HER PEOPLE. TO THE MEMORY OF ALBERT PRINCE CONSORT. AS A TRIBUTE OF THEIR GRATITUDE. FOR A LIFE DEVOTED TO THE PUBLIC GOOD’. The four larger mosaic triangles or ‘tympana’ represent the four arts: poetry, painting, architecture and sculpture.

The smaller set of eight represent those working in the arts.

Higher up on the canopy you can see bronze, gilded figures representing the virtues: Faith, Hope, Charity, Humility, Fortitude, Prudence, Justice and Temperance. Above that are eight angels, four in mourning, four in exaltation, topped by an orb and cross.

The Industrial Arts And Sciences

Four large groups of sculptures can be found at the base of the canopy. These represent the industrial arts and sciences: Agriculture, Commerce, Manufacturing and Engineering. 

The Frieze Of Parnassus

Below them runs the Frieze of Parnassus by Henry Hugh Armstead and John Birnie Phillip. It is named after Mount Parnassus, the favoured resting place of the Muses, goddesses of arts and science in Ancient Greek mythology.

This frieze depicts 169 individual figures over 210 feet of sculpture. Scott described it as ‘perhaps one of the most laborious works of sculpture ever undertaken’.

They depict musicians, poets, artists, architects and sculptors, such as Shakespeare, Chaucer, JMW Turner, Christopher Wren and even Scott himself. Bar Scott, they were all dead at the time of the sculpting. 168 of the figures are men and one, a woman, Nitocris, a female pharaoh of Ancient Egypt.

Rather than me trying to zoom in on individual faces, I would recommend you have a look at the London Remembers blog, which documents and records all memorials in London here. 

The Continents

At each corner of the plinth there are sculpture groups representing four continents: Europe, Africa, Asia and America. Britain was approaching the zenith of its empire and the sculptures very much represent a Victorian worldview. They include, as was often the case for the period, the stereotypical and sometimes patronising representation of other peoples and cultures.

Europe is by a sculptor called Patrick Macdowell and depicts a Queen, Europa, riding a bull. She is then surrounded by four queens, holding various objects. Britannia for example holds a trident representing naval and maritime power. 

Asia, by Foley, depicts an Indian woman riding an elephant, with a Chinese potter, Persian poet and Arab merchant.

Africa, by William Theed, depicts an Egyptian woman in a headdress riding a camel, surrounded by other figures, including a sphinx and a merchant in a turban. The image most jarring to the modern eye is a woman representing Europe, stood behind the camel, reading from a book to an African tribesman.

Finally, America by John Bell, with a native American figure riding a charging bison. Again, allegorical figures surround it, for example a figure representing Canada with an English rose at her breast.

Underneath The Memorial

The whole structure also stands above a series of brick catacombs: a ‘honeycomb’ of 868 brick arches and a foundation of concrete 17 feet thick. Ian Visits was lucky enough to visit back in 2007, after the memorial had undergone a restoration- you can read his blog here.

As you have seen, The Albert Memorial is a fascinating, at times bonkers, display of memorialisation and the Victorian world-view. It is a feast for the eyes, that gives us an insight into that period in Britain’s history and is worth a closer look next time you are in the area.

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