Pimlico Gardens is a small municipal green space on the Thames riverside which has two rather strange features…
First is a statue of the Right Honorable William Huskisson, who looks out over the gardens dressed in the fine garb of a Roman Senator. That’s a bit odd given that he was a parliamentarian of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, but what’s rather more unusual about him is the manner of his death. To use a modern London Underground colloquialism, Mr Huskisson was the first ‘one under‘ – he was mortally injured after falling under the wheels of Robert Louis Stephenson’s engineering marvel, the steam locomotive known as the Rocket…
On the opposite side of the gardens just in front of the Westminster Boating Base, a training centre for young people with an interest in watersports, is ‘The Helmsman’. This 15′ high bronze sculpture features a sailor, completely naked barring his helmet, standing at the tiller of his boat. The sculpture is by Andre Wallace and was installed after he won an open competition to introduce new art to the area in 1996.
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