A Victorian ship’s figurehead in the likeness of Lord Byron has been restored and returned to Seascale in a surprise reveal.
The local monument – which is said to have been salvaged from an 1884 shipwreck at Selker Rocks – was fixed up and then unveiled on April 4.
The carving had been on a plinth attached to Seascale cottage ‘Herding Neb’ – the oldest house in the village - as far back as living memory serves.
Jill Holt, owner of the figurehead, said: “They [Seascale residents] were very sentimental about it, as I am now, and I want to do the best for Lord Byron and the village.”
Holt said the villagers were adamant that the figurehead be returned to its original plinth.
The bust is said to be based on an 1873 engraving of Byron, with matching pearls, ruby necklace, and purple-mauve robe.
Byron, a poet renowned for his contributions to the Romantic movement in literature, was declared to be ‘mad, bad and dangerous to know’ by Lady Caroline Lamb – who he famously had an affair with.
The bust-length figurehead is most likely from a 19th century British merchant ship.
Merchant ships, not constrained by the government purse, often had figureheads representing literary figures.
Holt said of the figurehead: “I just thought it was this weird effigy on the side of a house because I didn't know any of the history…I just thought it was a monstrosity.
“I've grown to love him.”
Herding Neb was built in the 1820s and was recently featured on ‘Homes Under the Hammer’, with TV presenter Martel Maxwell visiting the property.
The cottage was registered as beer house in the 1851 census.
Neb means nose in Old English and can refer to a promontory of land.
Dubbed the “brainiest town in Britain" in the 1950s, Seascale owed this title to being home to workers from Windscale Nuclear Site (now known as Sellafield).
The Byron carving has been painstakingly restored by Robert Cooper, a volunteer at Ripon Men’s Shed in North Yorkshire.
Holt brought the sculpture here as she has a second home in Ripon.
Parts of the sculpture were missing upon arrival at Ripon Men’s Shed, including Lord Byron’s nose.
The figurehead was in such a state of disrepair when it arrived that Cooper questioned whether the figurehead could be restored at all.
The restoration involved removing decayed wood, reconstructing the figurehead’s original form, and undercoating and painting it.
Cooper said: “When it came it was horrible…some of it just crumbled.
“It was like dust.”
He said: “There was a great big hole that went right the way into the middle, so I had to scoop all that away and then treat it with a special wood rot paint.”
Cooper said that the only previous attempt to restore the figurehead had been someone climbing a ladder at Herding Neb to give it a lick of paint.
Cooper has been a member of Ripon Men’s Shed for three years and is responsible for the murals that adorn the inner walls of its building – a repurposed church.
Ripon Men’s Shed manager Barry Sutton said of Cooper: “It's just that he's able to do things that nobody else is able to do.
“Everybody finds a reason at some time to go along to Bob to help out with some sort of decoration or something that's needed on one of the projects.”
Sutton said of the initial hopes of restoration: “We were pretty doubtful because the figurehead was in such a state…it was just falling apart.
“He'd spent a hundred and fifty years hanging on a wall up in Cumbria.”
Ripon Men’s Shed is part of the wider Men’s Shed community, which is a non-profit organisation that provides spaces – primarily for men – for craftwork and socialisation.
The movement started in Australia in the 1980s to improve the overall wellbeing of older men.
The official Men’s Sheds slogan is “Shoulder to shoulder”, meaning that men make friends and socialise better when they are working on a common project.
Share