The statues in York House Gardens, Twickenham have fascinated me since I first stumbled across them about 20 years ago. At that time they were grey with dirt and covered in graffiti, fingers were missing and pieces chipped away, the pond was full of rubbish and the water cascade had been turned off. Despite (or partly because of) their neglected state, the statues possessed the power to make the hair stand up on the back of my neck. I recently revisited the statues and was surprised and happy to find they had been fully restored to their original glory. The creepiness I used to feel had all but disappeared, and instead I was pleasantly surprised to find I had a new admiration for their beauty.

I have found out a little about the statues and their strange history. The sculptures were first brought to England from Italy, by the Victorian financier and swindler, Whitaker Wright. He was convicted of fraud in 1904 and spectacularly committed suicide by swallowing a cyanide pill in the court anteroom immediately afterward. Whitaker Wright was an eccentric who bought Witley Park in Surrey and famously constructed a subterranean glass-roofed billiard room under one of his four lakes. The statues were still in their packing cases when they were bought by Sir Ratan Tata in 1909, to adorn a corner of York House Gardens.

There was an immediate problem in that nobody knew how the sculptures were supposed to fit together. The firm of J Cheal & Sons, specialists in the handling of garden statuary, were called in. It took 6 months to complete the project.

What story or myth the statues represent has never been confirmed. The main figure could be Greek Sea Goddess Amphitrite, wife of Poseidon, or just as easily Salacia, wife of Neptune. She is being drawn by Hippocampi, mythical creatures that are depicted as horses in their foreparts with coiling, scaly, fishlike hindquarters. The other figures are most likely to be Oceanids, Goddess Nymphs of water.

I think I found a Dryad in the York House Gardens..

York House Gardens and Statues are open to the public Monday to Saturday, free of charge.