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Paternoster (sculpture)

1975 establishments in England1975 sculpturesBronze sculptures in the United KingdomCity of LondonOutdoor sculptures in London
Sculptures by Elisabeth FrinkSculptures of men in the United KingdomSheep in artStatues in London
Elisabeth Frink Paternoster (4868077725)
Elisabeth Frink Paternoster (4868077725)

Paternoster (FCR 243), also known as Shepherd and Sheep or Shepherd with his Flock, is an outdoor bronze sculpture of 1975 by Elisabeth Frink, installed in Paternoster Square near St Paul's Cathedral in London, United Kingdom.The sculptural group measures 84 by 129 by 32 inches (213 cm × 328 cm × 81 cm). It shows an androgynous shepherd herding five sheep. The subject of the artwork reflects the former use of Paternoster Row as the site of Newgate Market for the sale of livestock and meat, and may also have theological overtones of the Good Shepherd, reflecting its position in the shadow of St Paul's Cathedral. It may draw inspiration from husbandry in the Cévennes region of France, where Frink spent time at the vineyard of her second husband Edward Pool in the late 1960s to early 1970s, or from Picasso's 1944 sculpture Man with Sheep, and may also play on the religious and linguistic similarity between the Latin paternoster ("our father") and pastor (shepherd). The work was commissioned by Trafalgar House for the north side of its 1960s development at Paternoster Square. It was unveiled in July 1975 by Yehudi Menuhin, who described it as "the antithesis of the buildings surrounding us". Around the same time, Trafalgar House also commissioned Frink's Horse and Rider statue, unveiled at Dover Street on Piccadilly in 1975. It was removed in 1997 to a temporary location on London Wall near the Museum of London while the site was redeveloped, and was reinstalled in 2003 on a new Portland stone plinth after the redevelopment was completed. A series of eight smaller versions was created in the 1980s. One example was installed at All Saints' Church in Great Thurlow in Suffolk, in memory of Ronald Vestey, a scion of the Vestey Brothers butchery empire; he was the son of Sir Edmund Vestey, 1st Baronet, and the father of Edmund Hoyle Vestey. Frink was born nearby, in Great Thurlow.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Paternoster (sculpture) (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Paternoster (sculpture)
Paternoster Square, City of London

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N 51.514647 ° E -0.098892 °
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Shepherd and Sheep

Paternoster Square
EC4M 7DX City of London
England, United Kingdom
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Elisabeth Frink Paternoster (4868077725)
Elisabeth Frink Paternoster (4868077725)
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Paul's walk
Paul's walk

Paul's walk in Elizabethan and early Stuart London was the name given to the central nave of Old St Paul's Cathedral, where people walked up and down in search of the latest news. At the time, St. Paul's was the centre of the London grapevine. "News-mongers", as they were called, gathered there to pass on the latest news and gossip, at a time before the first newspapers. Those who visited the cathedral to keep up with the news were known as "Paul's-walkers". According to Francis Osborne (1593–1659): It was the fashion of those times, and did so continue till these . . . for the principal gentry, lords, courtiers, and men of all professions not merely mechanic, to meet in Paul's Church by eleven and walk in the middle aisle till twelve, and after dinner from three to six, during which times some discoursed on business, others of news. Now in regard of the universal there happened little that did not first or last arrive here...And those news-mongers, as they called them, did not only take the boldness to weigh the public but most intrinsic actions of the state, which some courtier or other did betray to this society. Amongst whom divers being very rich had great sums owing them by such as stood next the throne, who by this means were rendered in a manner their pensioners. So as I have found little reason to question the truth of which I heard then, but much to confirm me in it. Standing on Ludgate Hill in the heart of the City of London, St Paul's Cathedral was well placed to be a hub of news. The cathedral had once been among the greatest in Europe, but a decline set in after the Reformation and by the end of the sixteenth-century, it had lost its steeple and was falling into disrepair. The cathedral and its surrounding St. Paul's Churchyard was a centre of the booksellers' trade, a venue for sellers of pamphlets, proclamations, and books. St Paul's was the place to go to hear the latest news of current affairs, war, religion, parliament and the court. In his play Englishmen for my Money, William Haughton (d. 1605) described Paul's walk as a kind of "open house" filled with a "great store of company that do nothing but go up and down, and go up and down, and make a grumbling together". Infested with beggars and thieves, Paul's walk was also a place to pick up gossip, topical jokes, and even prostitutes. John Earle (1601–1665), in his Microcosmographie (1628), called Paul's walk "the land's epitome . . . the lesser isle of Great Britain . . . the whole world's map . . . nothing liker Babel".Official attempts to stem the use of St. Paul's for non-religious purposes repeatedly failed. Both Mary I and Elizabeth I issued proclamations against "any of her Majesty's subjects who shall walk up and down, or spend the time in the same, in making any bargain or other profane cause, and make any kind of disturbance . . . during divine service . . . [on] pain of imprisonment and fine". Scholar Helen Ostovich has called St. Paul's at this time "more like a shopping mall than a cathedral". The letter writer John Chamberlain (1553–1626) walked to St. Paul's each day to gather news on behalf of his correspondents. His main purpose in his letters was to relate news of events in the capital to his friends, especially those posted on the continent, such as Ralph Winwood and Dudley Carleton, who both spent much of their political careers at the Hague. Chamberlain proved the perfect source for Carleton and others because of his willingness to "walk Paul's" for the news. He was made a member of a commission to refurbish St. Paul's but was cynical about its chances. He wrote that the king was "very earnest to set it forward, and they begin hotly enough" but feared it would prove "as they say, Paul's work".King James was aware of Paul's walk and referred to it in his poem about a comet, seen in 1618, which was talked of as signalling doom for the monarchy: "And that he may have nothing elce to feare/Let him walke Pauls, and meet the Devills there". Chamberlain reported that the comet "is now the only subject almost of our discourse, and not so much as little children but as they go to school talk in the streets that it foreshows the death of a king or queen or some great war towards".Ben Jonson (1572–1637) set a pivotal scene of his play Every Man Out of His Humour (1599) in Paul's walk. As Cavalier Shift enters and begins posting up advertisements, Cordatus introduces the scene with the words: "O, marry, this is one for whose better illustration we must desire you to presuppose the stage the middle aisle in Paul's, and that [pointing to the door on which Shift is posting his bills] the west end of it". The west end of the aisle was where advertisements, known as siquisses, were posted; those interested wrote a suggested meeting time and place at the bottom.According to Ostovich, Jonson conceived the Paul's-walking scene of the play as a "satirical nutshell" of London itself, presenting the walking up and down as "an obsessively competitive dance". This view of Paul's walk as a microcosm had already seen print in the cony-catching pamphlets of Robert Greene (1558–1592), who had depicted city rogues and tricksters preying on those who walked the aisles to gossip, smoke, and see the fashions. The playwright Thomas Dekker (1572–1632), in his "Paul's Steeple's Complaint" in The Dead Term (1608) and his Gull's Horn-book (1609), was another who wrote about Paul's walk. He recorded its use as a venue for fashion, saying of a gallant: "He that would therefore strive to fashion his legs to his silk stockings, and his proud gait to his broad garters, let him whiff down these observations; for, if he once get to walk by the book . . . Paul's may be proud of him".

St Nicholas Shambles
St Nicholas Shambles

St Nicholas Shambles was a medieval church in the City of London, which stood on the corner of Butcher Hall Lane (now King Edward Street) and Newgate Street. It took its name from the Shambles, the butchers area in the west of Newgate Street. The church is first mentioned as St. Nicholas de Westrnacekaria. In 1253 Walter de Cantilupe, Bishop of Worcester granted indulgences to its parishioners.In 1546, Henry VIII gave the church, along with that of St Ewin (also known as St Audoen) and the dissolved Christ Church priory to the City corporation. A new parish was created for Christ Church, out of those of St Nicholas and St Ewin, and part of that of St Sepulchre. St Nicholas' was demolished in 1547.The site was extensively excavated in 1975–79 in preparation for construction of the GPO headquarters, (now the BT Centre). The excavations identified several phases of building. The original nave and chancel probably dated from the 11th century. They were extended in the late 12th century. Chapels were added to the east end in the 14th century, a north aisle was added to the nave in the first half of the 15th century, and, finally, the east end was rebuilt and a sacristy added on the north. The excavations included the grave yard. Among the finds was a woman who died in the later stages of childbirth.Surviving parish records, now held among the archives of St Bartholomew's Hospital, include an exceptionally detailed inventory of church books, plate, vestments and other possessions of 1457, and a series of churchwardens' accounts running from 1452 to 1526.

Old St Paul's Cathedral
Old St Paul's Cathedral

Old St Paul's Cathedral was the cathedral of the City of London that, until the Great Fire of 1666, stood on the site of the present St Paul's Cathedral. Built from 1087 to 1314 and dedicated to Saint Paul, the cathedral was perhaps the fourth church at Ludgate Hill.Work on the cathedral began after a fire in 1087. Work took over 200 years, and was delayed by another fire in 1135. The church was consecrated in 1240, enlarged in 1256 and again in the early 1300s. At its completion in the mid-1300s, the cathedral was one of the longest churches in the world, had one of the tallest spires and some of the finest stained glass. The presence of the shrine of Saint Erkenwald made the cathedral a site of pilgrimage. In addition to serving as the seat of the Diocese of London, the building developed a reputation as a social hub, with the nave aisle, "Paul's walk", known as a business centre and a place to hear the gossip on the London grapevine. After the Reformation, the open-air pulpit in the churchyard, St Paul's Cross, became the place for radical evangelical preaching and Protestant bookselling. The cathedral was already in severe structural decline by the early 1600s. Restoration work begun by Inigo Jones in the 1620s was temporarily halted during the English Civil War (1642–1651). In 1666, further restoration was in progress under Sir Christopher Wren when the cathedral was devastated in the Great Fire of London. At that point, it was demolished, and the present cathedral was built on the site.