Restoring The Leonard Montefiore Fountain

Leonard Montefiore Fountain at Stepney Green

Sadly, the streets of our capital are punctuated with neglected drinking fountains that have run dry long ago, dismissed mostly as unsanitary relics of another age. Yet thanks to the inspirational work of the Heritage of London Trust, some will now have a new life, restored as refill stations for water bottles, thereby fulfilling an environmental purpose by reducing plastic waste as well as reinstating historic landmarks that enrich the urban landscape.

Over the winter, Contributing Photographer Rachel Ferriman & I followed the restoration of the Leonard Montefiore Fountain in Stepney Green which will be unveiled and switched on by Rabbi Julia Neuberger at a public ceremony at 1:15pm on Sunday 26th February followed by refreshments from Rinkoffs Bakery. All readers are welcome to attend.

Leonard Montefiore (1853 – 1879) who died at the age of just twenty-six was nephew of the famous Sir Moses Montefiore. Leonard counted Oscar Wilde and Arnold Toynbee among his friends, and during his short life was Secretary of the Society for the Extension of University Teaching in Tower Hamlets, a member of the Jewish Board of Guardians and a supporter of the women’s suffrage movement.

In 1878, Leonard moved to America ‘in order to see for himself what could be learned from the political and social condition of the people…’ There he died of rheumatic fever and was mourned as a man of ‘deep thought and energetic action’. The fountain in Stepney that commemorates him bears the inscription, ‘in affectionate remembrance of Leonard Montefiore who loved children and whom all children loved.. with clear brain and sympathetic heart, a spirit on flame with love for man, hands quick to labour, slow to part, if any good since time began, a soul can fashion, such souls can’.

My first sight of the fountain was in pieces at Fisher’s Court, the yard of Taylor Pearce, architecture and sculpture conservators, last October, where the marble and granite blocks were being cleaned to remove the grime of ages, while the lead plumbing was replaced and inset metal lettering restored. We were entertained by the dramatic spectacle of steam cleaning in action and I met Matt Nation, the conservator who is supervising the project.

‘I’ve been working with Taylor Pearce for just over thirty years as a sculpture conservator – we clean, repair and install artefacts,’ Matt explained to me. ‘We have worked in Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle, Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, Victoria & Albert Museum and the British Museum. We have already restored a number of fountains, and stone is robust but the hardest part is the plumbing. We have to take the whole thing apart to get access to the pipes. Most waterworks in London before the sixties were lead and all that has to come out. The working parts were long gone from the Stepney fountain, so we replicated those by looking at old photographs and other fountains. It has a decorative, lily-shaped spout with a push-button mechanism. We cast these bespoke bronze elements and then we machined parts to connect them to modern plumbing. It feels good to get them going again.’

In December, I walked over to Stepney Green to see the obelisk winched back into position on top of the fountain again and watched the mortar put in place to hold it all together. The handsome fountain occupies the apex at the triangular junction of Stepney Green and Redmans Rd sympathetically, creating a pleasing landmark that reflects the form of the war memorial clock nearby and the colour of the industrial dwellings across the road. It is the central element in the landscape at this south end of Stepney Green and, now the water flows again, it animates the place with new life.

The Leonard Montefiore Fountain is one of ten fountains currently under restoration by Heritage of London Trust, including the one at the entrance to Altab Ali Park in Whitechapel, and we live in the hope that we shall see all London’s fountains flowing with water again in years to come.

Matt Nation of Taylor Pearce who supervised the conservation of the fountain