This site celebrates the life and work of sculptor John
Cassidy (1860 - 1939).
April 2011: Unfortunately, 'Adrift' has again been removed from
public view due to the building works going on in the area to
refrurbish the Town Hall extension and the Library. The end of 2013
looks like a possible date for its re-appearance.
Update March 2013: see our News page
Revival
27 March 2009 was a historic day for students of John Cassidy's work, as his major allegorical work 'Humanity Adrift on the Sea of Life' returned to public display.
The new location is the north-west corner of St Peters Square, near the Central Library; the site where in 1988 a sculpture by Philip Jackson entitled 'Struggle for Peace and Freedom' was installed in 1988, winner of national competition which attracted 46 entries.
This work (above) seems to have been dogged with misfortune from the start: its planned site at the end of the nearby 'peace garden' was appropriated for a children's playground, the budget allocated (£15,000) meant that 'cold-cast' bronze (more fragile than hot metal casting) had to be used, and when unveiled it was reported that the sculptor's name was wrongly spelled on the plinth.
The figures were mounted at ground level, rendering the figures prone to graffiti and other damage. Its unfinished appearance made it unpopular with some, and after it began to deteriorate badly, 'The Burghers of Manchester' as some called it after its resemblance to Rodin's 'Burghers of Calais' has been removed, and faces an uncertain future. We believe that 'Adrift' will be installed in its place.
Philip Jackson, meanwhile, has gone on to many successes: in 2008 created a a statue of three football heroes for Manchester United Football Ground, and he was chosen to model the late Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother for a new memorial in London, unveiled in February 2009.
The following list is from a Manchester City Council report (PDF full version) entitled 'Update on the maintenance of war memorials, civic statues and public art' dated 2 September 2008.' The report notes, accurately that renovation of Cassidy's other major Manchester outdoor work, King Edward VII, was completed according to plan in 2008.
The revenue budget for war memorials, civic statues and public art currently stands at £172,080 for 2008/09, £127,120 for 2009/10 and £127,210 for 2010/11,
as approved in the 2008/09 business planning process. Planned for 2009/11:
- Conservation of Peel and the Wellington group, Piccadilly Gardens
- Conservation of the Jubilee Fountain, Albert Square
- Installation of Adrift, St Peter’s Square
- Phase 2 Conservation of Oliver Cromwell, Wythenshawe Park
- Steam cleaning and re-gilding of busts in the Sculpture Hall, Town Hall
- De-installation of Mediterranea, Castlefield basin
- Conservation and possible relocation of Joseph Brotherton
- Phase 2 of Queen Victoria, Piccadilly Gardens
Detail of the wife and baby.
The head of the family tries to summon assistance. In his new position he is facing across the square towards Manchester's war memorial Cenotaph, designed by Edwin Lutyens, where the Remembrance Service is held every November.
Detail abounds. In the background is the terracotta facade of the Midland Hotel, designed by Charles Trubshaw and opened in 1903.
St Peters Square in the 1960s, from an old postcard. The Cenotaph in the foreground; the new site for 'Adrift' is near where the red telephone box was, left of centre.
Come and Gone ...
At the site on 21 March 2009, workers could be seen preparing the plinth ...
... and by 25 March it was ready - just the place for the author to make an appearance.
2010: a look at 'Adrift' - with its plaque
March 2011: Gone again. We are assured it is in safe storage and will return.
Other statues in Piccadilly Gardens
The four Victorian statues, all memorials, dating back to the days of the Royal Infirmary, along the eastern periphery of Piccadilly Gardens, survived the makeover. Links are given to the Public Monuments and Sculptures Association record for each:
The Wellington Monument (1856), by Matthew Noble
Queen Victoria Monument, (1901) by Edward Onslow Ford
Robert Peel (1853), by William Calder Marshall.
James Watt (1857), by William Theed the Younger
Here is a link to a very interesting article about these works, written by Bob Speel.
Links and references:
Aidan O'Rourke photography
Piccadilly Gardens 'Muddy Awful' : Manchester Evening News, 2007
BBC panorama of Piccadilly Gardens
A very fine photograph of 'Adrift' in its new location, by Steven Heaton.
St Peters Square, by Manchester City Council
Buildings on Wikipedia:
J.J. Parkinson-Bailey, Manchester: an architectural history. Manchester University Press, 2000.
Derek Brumhead and Terry Wyke. A walk round Manchester sculptures. Walkround Books, 1990.
Good Riddance
Elisabeth House in St Peters Square about to be pulled down, 2011.
'Adrift' - City of Manchester
To describe this striking work, we can do no better than to quote the Public Monument and Sculpture Association National Recording Project, descibing ' Manchester's first modern figurative outdoor sculpture':
Bronze sculpture of a family
clinging to a raft in a stormy sea. The central figure is a half-naked
man, holding a sheet aloft in his raised right hand, calling for help.
Arranged around him are the figures of his wife and three children. His
wife is shown leaning over and kissing their infant son. To the left,
is the daughter, her raised arm held in her father's left hand. At the
rear is the prone figure of a youth, the elder son, holding his breast.
Parts of the raft are visible in the waves which make up the base.
Signed 'John Cassidy fecit 1907' it was exhibited at the New Gallery in London in that year. Rarely since his student days was Cassidy able to create anything other than portraits or memorials, and this is certainly his major work of 'pure' art. Showing the influence of the so-called 'New Sculpture' movement, on his thinking, the scene depicted is full of movement.
It was purchased by James Gresham, a wealthy local engineer who collected many works by living artists - perhaps it was also commissioned by him. Gresham offered it as a gift to the City Council with the intention that it would be displayed in the new municipal art gallery that was to be built on the site of the Royal Infirmary in Piccadilly, which was in process of relocating to a new site on Oxford Road. The donation had the proviso that 'my gift of this statuary to become absolute when a permanent home is found for it in your new gallery.'
The new gallery never appeared, the City's Art Gallery remaining in Mosley Street, but the statue did come to grace the site, becoming the centrepiece of the 'sunken garden' which was created there after World War I, as seen in the postcard view above. This garden, which gave its name 'Piccadilly Gardens' to the area, with its beautiful floral displays, and seats where weary shoppers could take their rest, was the pride of the City's gardens department and was enjoyed by many people over the years.
This postcard view is later than the one above, probably dating from the 1930s. The Rylands & Sons warehouse, designed by Harry S. Fairhurst, and constructed from 1929 to 1932, looms over the far corner of the gardens. (Note the radio mast on the roof.) This building was one of the last of Manchester's great cotton warehouses to be built, and one of the few to use a 'modern' style rather than taking inspiration from the past. Rylands and Sons was the firm established by John Rylands, subject of another Cassidy sculpture. In the 1950s, it was converted to a department store for Paulden's, whose own store, near the Manchester School of Art, had been destroyed by fire. Today it is known as Debenhams - the company had taken over Paulden's business in 1928, but continued to trade in Manchester as Debenhams until about 1970.
Manchester decided to commemorate the coronation of Queen Elizabeth in 1953 with a fountain, which was erected in the centre of the gardens in place of 'Adrift' - as seen in the postcard view above ... which causes waves of nostalgia to wash over the present writer. Wiles' toyshop on the corner across the road from Paulden's was the highlight of any visit to the city, perhaps preceded by lunch in Woolworth's self-service restaurant and a sit in the gardens until near the time for our hourly train home to depart from Piccadilly Gardens.
'Adrift' was relocated, on 21 April 1953, to the grassed ground-level area (in the foreground of the old picture) at the south end of the gardens, where it can be glimpsed towards the bottom left of the view above, against a backdrop of the futuristic buildings erected in the 1960s to replace ones destroyed by enemy bombing at Christmas 1940. It was here that our main heading picture of 'Adrift' was taken in 1998 by Aidan O'Rourke, who we have to thank for allowing us to include it, and indeed for all the marvellous work he does in compiling a photographic record of the Manchester area, and encouraging discussion about our built environment.
The gardens, and in particular the sunken area with its long benches (which, readers will note from the oldest picture on this page, were not originally present) became seen by the late 1990s as a haunt of so-called 'undesirables'. (Maintenance of flowerbeds no doubt cost money, too.) So in the wake of the 1996 bomb attack on the city centre, and in preparation for the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester, it was decided to carry out improvements to the gardens. A competition was held to choose a new design for the area. The winners – announced in 1998 – were the landscape architects EDAW and their partners: the engineers Arup, Japanese architect Tadao Ando, local architects Chapman Robinson, and lighting engineer Peter Fink.
Tragically, in order to fund this project, it was decided to allow the speculative building of a new and ugly office block, known as No.1 Piccadilly, on the level area at the south end, thus losing green space, a rare thing in the centre of Manchester. The 'improvements' to the sunken part of the gardens (sorry, we cannot resist the inverted commas), completed in 2002, involved filling them in to normal ground level, and creating a large lawn with a geometrical arrangement of paths and water features (by EDAW), and new a long, low curved buiding (the 'pavilion') on the west side including some eating places, which presents a bare concrete surface reminiscent of the the Berlin Wall to people to passengers at the Metrolink tram station beyond. Not a flower in sight - except on days when a flower market is held nearby! And ... we still read reports of drug dealers and other problems.
The Coronation Fountain of 1953 was rescued and placed in Platt Fields park - in Fallowfield, not far, as it happens, from John Cassidy's last home in Albion Road - with a rose garden planted around it, for the Queen's Golden Jubilee in 2002.
'Adrift' disappeared into Council storage, but after some years, and discussion about what to do with it, at the end of March 2009 it was back in public view, in a prominent location in St Peters Square (above).
The original plinth of 1908 is said to have carried a plaque with the following inscription:
HUMANITY ADRIFT ON THE SEA OF
LIFE, DEPICTING SORROWS AND DANGERS, HOPES AND FEARS AND EMBODYING THE
DEPENDENCE OF HUMAN BEINGS UPON ONE ANOTHER, THE RESPONSE OF HUMAN
SYMPATHY TO HUMAN NEEDS, AND THE INEVITABLE DEPENDENCE UPON DIVINE AID.
This plaque seems to have vanished many years ago: however, a replacement was created and installed some months after the work firsr re-appeared. It also includes a brief biographical note on Cassidy and a Credit to Gresham.
The new location is by the busy transport hub of St Peters Square in the centre of Manchester, and a short walk from the city's Art Gallery, the first home of 'Adrift' - just out of the view above in the distance. Visitors to the Gallery should alight here from the Metrolink tram.
The work seen from all four sides. The tent-like structure in the background is part of a children's play area,
The square is home to some of Manchester's most memorable buildings: the classical portico in the right-hand view (above) belongs to the Central Library, designed by E. Vincent Harris and completed in 1934.
The arcades are part of the 1930s Town Hall Extension, also designed by Harris, which harmonises with Alfred Waterhouse's adjoining Town Hall in Albert Square. (See our Albert Square page.)
St Peter's Church. built 1788-94 and demolished in 1907 to create the Square, stood in the centre of the square: the buildings in the background here were built after World War II. The one to the left, Elisabeth House (1960) apparently should have had stone facing, but the developers ran out of money. It looked forlorn, and almost empty in 2009; a new redevelopment has begin in 2011 and demolition was completed in Spring 2012. The developers are the same group who put the bland new office block on Piccadilly Gardens where 'Adrift' used to be: let us hope for something better.
Cassidy has signed 'Adrift' in his usual way. 'John Cassidy Fecit ... 1907.' 'Fecit' is Latin for 'he made it' and was used my many artists and sculptors in older times.
Written by Charlie Hulme, Updated May 2012.