Contested sites: commemoration, memorial and popular politics in nineteenth-century Britain

The second half of the nineteenth century witnessed a new phenomenon in public monuments and civic ornamentation.

Whereas in former times public statuary had customarily been reserved for 'warriors and statesmen, kings and rulers of men', a new trend was emerging for towns to commemorate their own citizens.

As the subjects immortalised in stone and bronze broadened beyond the traditional ruling classes to include radicals and reformers, it necessitated a corresponding widening of the language and understanding of public statuary.