Poets' Fountain

About

The Poets' Fountain was a public fountain with sculptures that was installed on a traffic island in Park Lane, London, in 1875. It was removed in 1948 and it is thought to have been destroyed. One sculpture, an allegorical figure of Fame, is known to have survived and is displayed in the gardens at Renishaw Hall in Derbyshire.

The sculpture cost £5,000, the gift of Mrs Maria Mangini (sometime Mangin) Brown of Hertford Street, Mayfair. She was born in London in 1777, of Italian descent, and married Aquila Brown, a merchant from Baltimore, in 1792. Their daughter Harriet Mangin Brown married a Portuguese nobleman, the Comte d'Orta (later Viscount D'Alte), but died before her mother and was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery.

Maria Mangini Brown died intestate in December 1871, aged 94, leaving an estate of over £250,000, but she had established a competition in 1871, shortly before her death, to design a sculpture to celebrate the glories of English poetry, to be installed near her house. The competition was won by the artist Thomas Thornycroft, and the sculpture was done by Thomas, assisted by his wife Mary Thornycroft and their son Hamo Thornycroft, with other members of the Thornycroft...