MONTHS of restoration work on the Central Market fountain is to be ripped out because it may not be historically accurate.
Public Services embarked on the work without discussing it with the Planning Department and started cladding the lower part of the fountain in coursed granite.
However, they now think that may not have been the way the fountain was intended to look.The cast iron fountain, made by George Smith in his Glasgow Sunworks Foundry in 1882, will now be restored to ‘a very bare and sparse appearance’ because the earliest known photograph of it, from that year, shows it in a much simpler state.But Blue Badge guide and member of the National Trust for Jersey council Sue Hardy has said the removal of the rockery is a ‘travesty’.
The author of A History of Jersey Markets, she said the reason for the bare appearance of the fountain in the picture was likely to be because it had only just been installed.Deputy Jackie Hilton, vice-president of the Environment and Public Services Committee, said that it was, to an extent, personal choice as to how the market’s centrepiece should be restored and she believed the fountain looked far more elegant without the rocky surround.
Article posted on 18th March, 2004 - 12.00am
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