Photos

After yesterday's Victoria Memorial Dark Angel, this is the next one of a small trip to London & UK.

Westminster Abbey is a really classical sightseeing point , allways crowded of people. The abbey is too big to fit well in my camera, and everybody allready saw thousands of postcard-pictures of it.

I prefered more intimate details and, on the Western Facade, just above the door, there are those ten statues welcoming the visitor.

They are around 2 meters size. Here is a front view and you can click on each statue to have more info.

The title is just a reminding of my Stockholm's Guards Perfect Row I posted a few days ago...

Cropped, corrected perspective, usm after resizing, cropped again and frame.

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From the Abbey's website:

These ten statues are of individual martyrs; but they are intended to represent all those others who have died (and continue to die) in similar circumstances of oppression and persecution. They are drawn from every continent and many Christian denominations. They include victims of the struggle for human rights in North and South America, of the Soviet and Nazi persecutions in Europe, of religious prejudice and dictatorial rule in Africa, of fanaticism in the Indian subcontinent, of the brutalities of the Second World War in Asia and of the Cultural Revolution in China. In these and other similar circumstances during this most violent of centuries thousands of men and women have paid with their lives for their faith and their convictions. Those represented here have left their testimony to the ultimate cost of Christian witness and to its enduring significance.

Models for the statues were carefully designed by Tim Crawley from such records and photographs as exist of each of the martyrs and the figures have been carved from French Richemont limestone by him and, under his general direction, by Neil Simmons, John Roberts and Andrew Tanser. Two of these sculptors had already worked on some 300 pieces of stone carving which needed replacement during the restoration of Henry VII Chapel in 1990-95. With these ten statues of modern figures in gothic niches they have now fulfilled one of the most demanding and important sculptural commissions of our time.

The statues were unveiled by the Archbishop of Canterbury, in the presence of H.M. The Queen, H.R.H. The Duke of Edinburgh and church leaders and representatives from many parts of the world on 9 July 1998.

(note: there was a restauration program that ended in 1995, then those ten places were empty, and that's what they decided to do)