The Coade Lion, Westminster Bridge. [Closer view] William Frederick Woodington (1806-1893). 1837. Photograph and text by Jacqueline Banerjee, 2009. [You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the photographer and (2) link your document to this URL.]
Coade Stone was an artificial stone popular during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, especially durable in the form produced at Mrs Eleanor Coade's factory in Lambeth. A kind of ceramic which required lengthy firing at a very high temperature (see "Mrs Coade's Stone"), it was used, for example, for Flaxman's work on the front of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in 1809. This lion, made at the Coade factory and originally painted red, once crowned the arch of the Lion Brewery beside the Hungerford Bridge. Here Emile Zola was amused to see it "poised in mid-air," making a special trip to revisit it during his exile in England in the late 1890s. He referred to it fondly as "my lion" (qtd. in Vizetelly 50).
The 13-tonne sculpture was taken down before the brewery was demolished in the late 1940s to make way for the Festival of Britain site in 1951, and was used as part of the decoration for the festival. It was next installed outside Waterloo Station, and finally arrived in its present position on the south side of Westminster Bridge in 1966 (see Weinreb et al. 197). Another copy, which once stood on top of the old brewery building, is now at Twickenham at Gate 3 of the All-England Rugby Football Club. A different, couchant Coade lion, commissioned in 1821 and designed by Thomas Hardwicke, can also be seen on top of the Lion Gate at Kew (see "Lion Gate and Lodge"). However, thanks partly to its setting near the seat of government, the lion on Westminster Bridge seems the most splendid of all. It may be appropriate that this symbol of Englishness should once have adorned a brewery!
References
"Mrs Coade's Stone". ntlworld.com. Viewed 7 April 2009.
"Lion Gate and Lodge". Kew Gardens website. Viewed 7 April 2009.
Vizetelly, Ernest Alfred. With Zola in England: A Story of Exile. London: Chatto & Windus, 1899. Available offsite here.
Weinreb, Ben et. al. The London Encyclopaedia. 3rd ed. London: Macmillan, 2008.
Last modified 7 April 2009