After a successful campaign to raise the funds, a bronze statue of railway pioneer Thomas Brassey is to be placed outside Chester Railway Station, the building he constructed.
Brassey was born in 1805 near Chester in Buerton. He went on to build one in 20 of the world’s railways, including three-quarters of the railways in France and a third of those in the UK. He worked with many of the great engineers of the Victorian times, including Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Joseph Locke, and Robert and George Stephenson.
Cheshire West and Chester Council has now approved the statue. A planning officer’s report said:
“Although there is a bust of Thomas Brassey in Chester Cathedral, commemoration plaques at Chester Station and two Chester streets named after him, there are no statues of him anywhere. He deserves to be better recognised as the world’s greatest railway builder.”
The Thomas Brassey Society, which raised the funds and made the application, has commissioned the sculptor of Liverpool’s Beatles statue, Andy Edwards, to work on the new statue. The statue will show Brassey in his mid-40s, which would have been his age in 1848 when he completed the Shrewsbury–Chester Railway and Chester Station. It will be placed on Station Road to the front of the station.
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Written By
Mark