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It’s been a while since we lost Queen Elizabeth II, and while some of us are still getting over it, there’s now a poignant but fun memorial to her in the form of a sparkly new statue. Recently, in the small market town Oakham in Rutland, England, sculptor Hywel Pratley unveiled a seven-foot bronze statue of the late royal matriarch. Read on to find out how the whole thing came about.
The unveiling ceremony acted as a pseudo celebration/memorial for the Queen, and the statue depicts Elizabeth II as a spry young woman with her beloved corgis at her feet. The statue sits outside the local library in Rutland, and the town’s city council called it the “first permanent memorial to Her Late Majesty” in the whole country.
Elizabeth II, by the way, passed away on September 8, 2022. The statue shows the elegant young Queen in ceremonial robes, wearing the George IV Diadem crown and the Order of the Garter sash around her gown. The corgis were added because of the late Queen’s adoration for her dogs.
The statue was commissioned by Dr. Sarah Furness, the Lord-Lieutenant of Rutland. Furness raised $155,000 to make it all happen. Furness said people at the statue unveiling were “witnessing a piece of history” and that the beloved Queen gave the people of England “70 years of exemplary service.”
“Rutland may be a small county, but the response to this had been huge with contributions from local businesses and individuals of varying sizes,” she said. The idea for the statue came to Furness right after the Queen died, she said, and as the a representative of the monarchy in Rutland, she felt compelled to honor the Queen in some way.
People kept “stopping me in the street, and saying what a shock it was the queen had died and how much she meant to them,” she said.
There were hundreds of people in attendance at the unveiling, including a number of corgis. How many corgis? More than 50, at one point.
“What most of us remember about Queen Elizabeth is her warmth,” Furness said. “By showing Queen Elizabeth’s love of dogs, we show her humanity.” Many of the corgis hailed from the Welsh Corgi League, and some of them were wearing cute British-themed bandanas.
Corgis and Queen Elizabeth II go together like peanut and butter. She got her first one when she was 18, named Susan. Susan went on to be the matriarch of 14 generations of dogs. Elizabeth II owned more than 30 in her lifetime, including a number of “dorgies”, which are dachshund/corgi mixes.
In the book The Corgi and the Queen, author Caroline Perry described how corgis were a way that the Queen expressed her personality to the world. “She couldn’t choose her life, but she could choose her companions,” Perry said in the book. “The fact that these corgis are so spirited, so lively and so mischievous, I think in some way that was her way of expressing how she felt inside but wasn’t able to convey. She was so prim and proper and never put a foot wrong, did she? Yet these naughty dogs are doing all kinds of things that maybe she wished she could do.”
After the Queen passed, the Duchess of York Sarah Ferguson took in the Queen’s last two corgis, named Muick and Sandy. Ferguson told People that the dogs are “national icons” so she panics even when they chase a squirrel. “But they’re total joys, and I always think that when they bark at nothing, and there’s no squirrels in sight, I believe it’s because the Queen is passing by.”
Pratley’s first idea for the statue was the Queen in her later years in a pillbox hat on a bench with corgis all around her. Furness said she thought the idea was “charming,” but it just didn’t feel quite right for the country as a whole. “If it were a statue of my grandmother, I’d have loved it,” Furness said, “but I thought for the longest serving monarch, and a statue that’ll last for hundreds of years, she had to look like a queen.”
When he mocked up the current version with the Queen in robes, and kept the corgis, Furness said she had no problem at all raising the money for the statue. Pratley told The Telegraph that he hoped the dogs would “tap into the late Queen’s humanity and address her friendliness.”
“I very quickly thought that I would like to have a corgi nestling in her robes by her feet because what a great symbol it is, artistically, of her being mother of a nation,” he told The Telegraph. He also knew that the statue would be a popular destination for tourists, so he added the plinth because he could also see it being “popular with the Instagram generation.”
“It will make a perfect backdrop for pictures and people will be able to reach up and pat a dog or if small enough even sit in its back,” he said. He told the New York Times that he wanted to capture the Queen the way so many of her subjects remembered her: as “an almost motherly figure.”
He also pointed out that British statues from the past tend to be more serious, on pedestals and practically glaring down at people. Pratley said modern statues are more interactive, and he hopes that children will also sit next to the corgis and not feel intimidated.
The statue was unveiled with much fanfare as local bishop Debbie Sellin blessed it and said, “May it bring joy and encouragement.” Then a bagpiper played a sad melody, followed by a rendition of Britain’s national anthem from the crowd. After that, people lined up to take selfies.
While no official member of the immediate royal family was on hand, Alicia Kearns, the Tory Member of Parliament for Rutland and Melton, said that King Charles would eventually come and visit the statue. Charles has been postponing public events due to getting cancer treatments.