Columns commemorating British history.

FASHIONS in art and architecture go as regularly as they come. There is a certain charm about a form that has a starting-point and a closure; I think, for example, of memorial brasses in churches: first introduced in the early thirteenth century, they flourished exceedingly until the Reformation, when for various theological reasons most of them were torn up; most of the rest were done away with in the Civil War, when warlike uses, such as manufacturing bullets, were found for the alloy, leaving just a small dribble to carry on into the Victorian period.

So it was with tall monuments. The oldest I can recall in modern Britain (setting aside Roman examples like the wonderful Trajan's Column) is The Monument in the City of London, built to commemorate the Great Fire of 1666, and carrying an inscription obliquely blaming Roman Catholics for it (causing Alexander Pope, himself a Catholic born nearby, to call it 'like a tall bully... [which] lifts its head and lies'). For two centuries or so, tall columns were an accepted form of marking something or someone noteworthy: from Newcastle to Truro, they dot the landscape, suggesting power and dominance. This was, after all, the period of the British Empire, and who had a better right to be proud and conspicuous than the British? We gave up columns shortly before we gave up the Empire, and I wonder if the two things are connected; we certainly did not give up public statuary, at least in London, where we are still building monuments, mostly to do with the Second World War: one thinks of the rather strange effort in Whitehall, to remember the role of Women in War, or the statue of Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris in the Strand, apparently built and placed to attract pacifist paint-throwers.

The period of columns was also, of course, the period of industrialisation, of factories, boiler-houses and tall chimneys, which could themselves be monuments of national importance. I think, for example, of Manningham Mills in Bradford, where before the chimney was erected the parapet was assembled on the ground to show that a coach and four could be driven comfortably round it; or the mill at Halifax where the chimney begins by hugging a hillside, and then, to get sufficient draft, bursts up from the hilltop in a good imitation of the Kutb Minar in Delhi (a tower feature with which we were all familiar from the illustrated magazines telling us about the Empire).

Nowadays, of course, the British are neither sufficiently informed about, nor interested in, their own history. The only column most of them could name is Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square, largely because it is used in the popular press as an indication of the size of the latest cruise liner (along with London buses and football pitches). It is in fact one of the best-looking and best designed columns, guarded as it is by bronze lions designed by Sir Edwin Landseer, and well worth the intermittent large cost of keeping it in good order. Most other columns impinge on the public in the corner of an eye, as they speed along a motorway, and my first example is one of these, to be seen from the M5 in Gloucestershire by families going to the South-West.

South of Gloucester, near a motorway service area, it may be seen on the sharp but low escarpment of the Cotswolds, a fairly simple pillar. Anyone looking for it has to find the village of North Nibley, and there it is: a monument put up in 1894, for the (probable) four-hundredth birthday of a local boy, William Tyndale, the first translator of the New Testament into something like modern English. Simply to put the New Testament into English, and in a pocket edition at a reasonable price, was to strike a blow at the late-medieval Church. It enabled any 'boy that driveth the plough', in Tyndale's phrase - provided he could read, and a good many could - to know the essentials of Christian theology, to go beyond the simple, if edifying, tales about Jesus, Our Lady and the Saints which were the staple of late medieval spirituality, and to form his own answer to the question 'What must I do to be saved?'

Tyndale, of course, fell out with the Church authorities in England, fled to the Rhineland - then the centre of printing in northern Europe - where he published his biblical translations, and a good deal of polemical stuff which showed that he was becoming markedly Protestant. He took refuge in a house for English merchants in Antwerp which enjoyed a measure of diplomatic immunity, was tricked into leaving it by a traitor (there was a multitude of these, on every side), was arrested and eventually condemned for heresy. The punishment for this was to be burnt at the stake, and so Tyndale was, although mercifully he was strangled first. His last recorded words were 'Lord, open the King of England's eyes', and the following year, 1536, Henry VIII ordered English Bibles to be put in all churches. 1894 was a birthday to commemorate; so, too, was 1994, when the Tyndale Society was formed to revive his memory and continue his work. Anyone who comes across a Tyndale New Testament, produced by the Society and edited by the British Library, will, after tittering at some of his quaint spellings, soon realise that he shaped the Bible thereafter, and did more, raising English from a rustic dialect to a language in which everything serious could be said.

Press on down the M5 past Bristol and into Somerset, and about sixty miles past Tyndale's column you will notice on the left another range of low but fairly steep and commanding hills. These are the Blackdown Hills, and shortly after passing another service area, a sharp finger can be seen rising from the skyline. If your passengers wonder what this might be, draw attention to the sign at a junction which announces the small town of Wellington. Could it perhaps be something to do with the Iron Duke? Indeed, it could. When General Wellesley began to do so well in Spain against the French, and it was desired to reward him with a peerage-he being only a younger son of an Earl, and younger brother to a Marquis-there was some inquiry into his family history. The Wellesleys were Irish, and Anglo-Irish Ascendency of the purest kind (when the Duke was asked in later life why he, a Dubliner born in Merrion Street, showed and felt no Irish sentiment whatever, he replied 'Our Lord was born in a stable; did that make him a horse?') Research suggested that the family had moved from Somerset in the thirteenth century, and a road map suggested that the only place-name even vaguely relevant to 'Wellesley' was 'Wellington', so the General, being a long way away, was stuck with it, first as Viscount and then, several victories later, as Duke. He did buy a small farm near the town, to show some local feeling, but never stayed there.

After Waterloo, of course, nothing was too good for His Grace, and a subscription was raised to build a majestic column to be topped with a cast-iron statue. Wellington contributed the site, out of his farm. The money, alas, did not run to the full design; an obelisk was a compromise. Nelson had died a romantic hero and still only in his forties; Wellington lived on to be a craggy, fairly disagreeable-looking old man. He was ill served by the early stages of photography, which did him no favours. (By coincidence, the same fate befell Mozart's Constanza; anyone who has a mental picture of Wolfgang and Constanza as lovers forever young should brace themselves for an image of an elderly Hausfrau with a likeness to a Queen Victoria distinctly unamused.) Yet The 'Iron Duke' became an almost universally revered public figure, especially in his years when he was no longer seen as a Tory politician. Newspapers delighted in the latest anecdote of Field Marshall the Duke of Wellington especially giving details of his latest curt reply to people who requested him to exert his influence for them or their causes. The Duke was probably the first public figure who had a series of printed replies at the ready for his ever growing post.

The money came in by dribs and drabs, and the obelisk did not reach its full height, which is a whopping 175 feet, until 1892, forty years after the Duke's death. Ironically, the Duke's main political opponent, Earl Grey, famous for the Reform Bill of 1832, had received his own column in Newcastle in 1838. The Duke, however, was well-commemorated elsewhere; there is a correct but dull equestrian statue in the City of London, some statues in industrial towns and outside his house at Hyde Park Corner there is an heroic nude of a vaguely Greek warrior ('Achilles') dedicated to him 'from his grateful countrywomen'. The Duke had some reputation as a ladies' man, but I do not think that is the connection. (This statue kept on losing its fig-leaf. The civil servant who had responsibility for it blamed 'Australian tourists', though on scant evidence. Replacing a bronze fig-leaf was expensive and troublesome; each one cost pounds in the 1960s. The officer inquired, and discovered that a convincing facsimile could be made in plastic for a few pennies each-provided that hundreds were ordered. In due course, several large packing-cases were delivered, containing an hundred years' supply at least. The surplus was distributed to friends, for use as ash-trays and paper-weights. I am afraid I have lost mine.)

To find the obelisk from the motorway, leave at Junction 26, turn towards Wellington, take the side road labelled 'Monument' and drive up a primrose-studded hill to the top. The National Trust owns the obelisk, and seems not to know what to do with it. It clearly needs some TLC, like the surfacing of the walk from the car park. A high fence shuts the public off from the obelisk, and one can just see that a Napoleonic cannon guards it all. This is a naval cannon, and nothing to do with Wellington or Waterloo. It is apparently the last survivor of fifteen cannon cast by the Carron Foundry in Scotland for the Russian Navy. Some were thrown in the Exe at Exeter for non-payment of harbour dues, and most of the rest were taken in the Second World War for salvage. The one survivor looks forlorn; so, indeed, does the whole site and obelisk. Grey, grim and forbidding-I would say it was worth one visit, taking one hour, until the National Trust lay out a picnic site and a cafe and make something of it. A friend with a pilot's licence tells me that Wellingtons' obelisk is well-known as a waymark to pilots of light aircraft in the West of England.

My next monument is not far from Wellington's, up a less important road called the A378, near a large village called Curry Rivel. Once again, a sharp hill-top gives a wide view over the Somerset Levels, flat and fertile marshland, but with not many people to see this more modest and elegant column in memory of Sir William Pynsent, and his really very odd act of generosity.

The period is the 1760s, and the Seven Years' War, which some historians call, very fairly, the First World War-but which at the time was called the Maritime War-was coming to an end, with Britain victorious in the Americas, the East and West Indies, with her ally Frederick the Great in Europe, and everywhere one turned: Britain was Top Nation, and this saw the foundation of the British Empire if anything did. The leading statesman at home was Pitt the Elder, a marvellous orator (so we are told-oratory was an ephemeral art in those days), a fairly neurotic character, apt to burst into tears if asked to conduct business, but occupying a position in the nation not far from that held by Winston Churchill in 1945. Perhaps that explains why Sir William Pynsent, who did not know Pitt, who had never met him as far as we know, should leave him a large estate and a manor house as an act of gratitude and admiration. I know nothing about Sir William's family; either he had none, or he was on bad terms with them.

Pitt was not very rich, although he belonged to the loose group of Whig families called 'the cousinhood', and like his son Pitt the Younger had a poor grip on his own finances. (One other family in the cousinhood, Grenville, also provided a father and son as Prime Minister, George and William). He was glad enough to receive the bequest, and spent a couple of years in Sir William's mansion house, resisting attempts to drag him back to affairs in London. (His psychological condition was such that when he did go to London, he stopped at Marlborough at a coaching inn called the Castle and Ball, where he developed the fancy that the inn was one of his houses, and required the inn servants to dress in his livery.) He was right-minded enough to see that Sir William was duly commemorated by the column on the hill, with a Latin quotation which I am afraid I found fairly inscrutable.

Column Number Three is another National Trust oddity, near Dorchester, on a hill-top with a view towards the sea. It is called the Hardy Monument, and quite close to it are Thomas Hardy's Birthplace in a cottage at Lower Bockhampton, and Hardy's villa at Max Gate near Dorchester, which the novelist, who had trained as an architect, designed himself (a good many bedrooms, but only one bathroom). It is therefore understandable that, to judge from conversations overheard in the car park, literary-minded tourists come to the monument to pay their respects to a great author. They can get quite a long way into the visit before they realise that it is quite a different Thomas Hardy commemorated here - Admiral Sir Thomas, who lived to a good old age and performed many good services to the Navy and the nation, but who is of course best-known because in his thirties he was Nelson's flag-captain in HMS Victory and was bending over his dying Admiral when Nelson asked piteously, 'Kiss me, Hardy'. (A century and a half later. Nelson's legitimate descendant used to argue in the press that Nelson really said 'Kismet, Hardy', causing many quiet smiles.)

It was both a good and a bad thing about the Royal Navy in those days that there was a well-recognised system of personal patronage - that officers who had made it to near the top would recognise merit in younger men, befriend them and push their careers. Nelson had been pushed by Admiral Hood, and in turn did it for Hardy. When serving under Nelson in a frigate near Gibraltar, Hardy had taken a rowing-boat and gone to rescue a man fallen overboard. The current began to carry him near an enemy ship. 'By God, I'll not lose Hardy', exclaimed Nelson, who ordered sail to be shortened. The enemy was confused by his manoeuvre, did not press his advantage, and Nelson was able to rescue his young lieutenant.

It is worth remembering that Captains and Admirals of that time were frequently very rich men. If they had the luck to capture rich merchantmen, prize money could do a good deal for them. In 1740, a warrant of George II settled the proportions various ranks were to have: commanders-in-chief, one-third of the total; other flag officers, one-fifteenth between them; other commissioned officers, three-fifteenths, and so on. Even the humblest seamen were in for something. A famous ship in this business was the Hermione, who had sailed, crammed with treasure, from Havana before the declaration of war (the Seven Years' War) was known there. She was captured, unsuspecting, just a day's sail from home. The two frigate captains who took her had [pounds sterling]65,000 each, and the common seamen [pounds sterling]500. I recall years ago being shown Nelson's bank accounts, by a retired bank cashier at Coutts who had saved them, he said, from the incinerator. By banker's order. Nelson paid his wife [pounds sterling]1,600 a quarter. Many noblemen lived on less. His next line of expenditure was to his wine merchant; dinners on board the Victory were convivial.

My last column is in some ways the strangest. In Somerset, near the town of Street (a not very attractive place once known for shoe-making and now for Millfield School), there is the village of Butleigh, well off any main road. In the early eighteenth century, the Vicar here was a well-connected man - also a Prebendary of Wells Cathedral - called Hood. He had two sons. His only naval contact was an officer friend, who came to stay, and who told the vicar's young sons about life at sea. He must have been a good raconteur, because he recruited them both, and set them on the way to becoming respectively Admiral Lord (Samuel) Hood and Admiral (Alexander) Lord Bridport. They were both made Admirals on the same day, in a long list of officers advanced in the War of American Independence, thus lending colour to the famous toast at naval dinners: 'To bloody war and quick promotion!'

The Hood Monument stands on a ridge between Street and Butleigh; Somerset is well-supplied with ridges and hill-tops which, though not particularly high, are steep and offer commanding views. You can see the monument from several miles away, but it is curiously difficult to find at ground level. It is a case of 'Oh, there it is!' as you glance upwards at a bend in the road and see this strange thing towering among the trees. Opinions differ, but I find it curiously barbaric in design, being in the Tuscan or Roman Doric Order - not an Order much used in Britain, and one which does not employ entasis (the artificial slimming of the column in the centre, to correct the optical illusion of a swelling there, invented by the Greeks and quite essential if the column is not to look mis-shapen). There is no statue on the top, but a sort of giant urn ringed with bows and stems of sailing warships. Pevsner's Buildings of England: South Somerset says there is a small room roofed with a glass dome at the top, but the monument is locked up so I haven't been able to verify this. The Hood commemorated died in 1814: the column is dated 1830, which is fairly quick going. The architect was called Goodridge; a property developer from Bath who also built Beckford's Tower at Bath.

The Hoods were an amazing family. The Dictionary of National Biography lists eight of them who became admirals. Two pairs of cousins, both near in age, and both called Samuel and Alexander, provided three flag officers out of four. (The fourth stuck at captain.) The monument in fact commemorates the younger Samuel, who performed many good services including, for example, the evacuation of Sir John Moore's army from Corunna - a kind of mini-Dunkirk. He was intensely popular with all ranks, who presumably subscribed and thus got this column erected. He spent so much of his life at sea that he was famous for being awkward and silent on shore and in society. The elder Samuel, Admiral Lord Hood, had to rest content with having the great capital ship HMS Hood named after him; this was the ship which encountered the Bismarck between Iceland and Greenland in 1941, and was sunk with only three survivors. Samuel was a famous fighting admiral, against the French Admiral de Grasse in the American War of Independence-and notable also for being one of the few flag-officers to get on with the notoriously bad-tempered Admiral Rodney. It seems to have been quite difficult for the Admiralty to find colleagues who would serve with George Rodney.

Lord Hood lived into old age, keeping up his connection with Somerset, and died in his eighties following a fall down the stairs in his house, No. 5, Queen Square, Bath. Jane Austen was at work on the last and best of her novels, Persuasion, at the time: it came out two years later, in 1816. It is largely set in Bath, and the cast of characters includes many naval officers. When foolish Sir Walter Elliot must give up his country mansion and settle in Bath, his elder daughter says 'None of your Queen Squares for us!' Since Sir Walter could not abide naval men ('Life at sea ages a man so!'), I wonder if it was famous Lord Hood that Jane had in mind? Of course, two of her own brothers were in the Navy and achieved flag rank, causing her to comment that she knew all about 'Rears and Vices'. (I'm sure she intended Admirals.)

Hoods went on providing naval officers well into the twentieth century. The last Admiral Hood commanded the Third Battle Cruiser Squadron, which was sent ahead by Jellicoe at Jutland to grip the Germans. He paid the price of meeting the High Seas Fleet first: Hood's flagship Invincible blew up, with six survivors, not including the Admiral. It would be well worth re-working the inscription on the monument to remember several more Hoods. The monument, which I believe is still owned by a Hood family trust, is not in good shape, and will need money spending on it ere long.

George Wedd, C.B., is a former Senior Civil Servant.