A builder cast in metal in London’s Pimlico near the Albanian embassy
THE ALBANIAN EMBASSY is on St Georges Drive in London’s Pimlico. On our way there we passed a statue that stands on a triangular plot where St Georges Drive meets Denbigh Street at an acute angle. The statue commemorates Thomas Cubitt (1788-1855), who was born in Norfolk and died in Surrey. It was created in 1995 by William Fawke (1948-2018).
The metal sculpture depicts Cubitt standing on a platform facing a pile of building bricks. In his left hand, he holds a long, notched stick – a brick measure. The platform upon which he stands is supported by balustrade bottles (‘balusters’) that are used to support the railing that rests upon them. The bottles supporting Cubitt are the type found on the houses built by Cubitt.
Cubitt was the son of a carpenter. During his trip to India as a ship’s carpenter, Thomas earned sufficient money to be able to establish a building business in London’s Holborn. In cooperation with his younger brothers, William and Lewis (who designed Kings Cross station), his firm took off. He was an excellent organiser, and created teams of builders that included every branch of the trade. Some of his projects are listed in an interesting web page (https://victorianweb.org/art/architecture/cubitt/bio.html):
“By now he was a close friend of the royal family, having collaborated with Prince Albert on the design for Osborne House, which he then built for him. He also won the contract to extend Buckingham Palace, and it was Cubitt as well who orchestrated the dismantling of Nash’s Marble Arch there, and its reassembly at Hyde Park, ready for the Great Exhibition. The Exhibition itself was a project suggested to Prince Albert by Cubitt, after a conversation with a friend who had recently visited an exhibition in Paris. From 1839 Cubitt was an active member of the Institution of Civil Engineers; he was a leading figure in the campaigns for a main drainage system and a more extensive Thames Embankment, and rooted for limiting smoke emissions and conserving open space: Battersea Park owes its existence largely to him.”
In addition to this and other major projects, he built much of Tavistock Square and great swathes of housing in Pimlico. So, it is fitting that his statue has placed in the midst of the houses which his firm created in Pimlico. It was interesting to ‘discover’ the statue of Cubitt shortly before we entered the embassy which is housed in one of the houses he built in Pimlico.
