Ozymandias in a northern park

The Griffins at Wallington

by Simon Currie

These chimeras were brought

from Bishopsgate for ballast:

an empty collier sailing back

London to Newcastle.

 

Ozymandias in a northern park,

four heads rest on sober grass

as if, landlocked icebergs,

their bodies bulked below.

 

No more than emblems,

they face rude frosts,

gaze from blank orbs

that give away nothing.

 

So odd, they make strangers

appear familiar, ghosts

come back from years ago

to stare them out.

The four carved limestone griffin heads that glare across the lawns at Wallington Hall in Northumberland date back to the 16th century. They were brought back from Bishopsgate, London, around 1760 as ballast in one of Sir Walter Blackett's returning colliers. The heads were first used to ornament the surroundings of Rothley Castle - a folly constructed in the eighteenth century deer park at Rothley which is now outside the property. The heads were subsequently moved to a site near the Chinese Pond inside the grounds, to the east of Wallington Hall. It is said they were moved to a spot in the woods and that their wings are still somewhere nearby. They finally found their current resting place on the east lawn in 1928.

There are four of them, each slightly different all staring out to the rising sun. The photograph is mine.