Monument to Frederick William Robertson
| Browse information by: Location Makers General Information Classification Object Parts Object Condition History References Photographs |  Author: Anthony McIntosh Copyright for Photograph: Creative Commons |
Location
| Street: | Lewes Road |
| Town: | Brighton |
| Parish: | Brighton |
| Council: | Brighton & Hove City Council |
| County: | East Sussex |
| Postcode: | BN2 |
| Location on Google Map | |
| Object setting: | Garden |
| and in: | Religious |
| Access is: | Public |
| Location note: | Extra-Mural Cemetery, 'Robertson's Special' area, north side, to the west of the Ray Mausoleum |
| In the AZ book: | East Sussex |
| Page: | 132 |
| Grid reference: | D5 |
| The A-Z books used are A-Z East Sussex and A-Z West Sussex (Editions 1A 2005). Geographers' A-Z Map Company Ltd. Sevenoaks. | |
| OS Reference: | TQ3205 |
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Makers
| Name : | William Wyon RA |
| Role: | Sculptor |
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General Information
| Commissioned by: | The Brighton Mechanics Institute and other townspeople |
| Work is: | Extant |
| Owner custodian: | Robertson family |
| Object listing: | Grade II: of special interest warranting every effort to preserve them |
| Building listing: | II |
| Description: | A stone monument in the form of a low Egyptian pylon. The monument faces east, with a rectangular bronze plaque modelled in low relief above the inscription, depicting Robertson preaching. On the west side is a roundel of similar design showing Robertson preaching to working men. There is a Horus symbol in the carved stone frieze. |
| Inscription: | WE THEN AS AMBASSADORS OF CHRIST Bottom of the bronze roundel: OTHER(?) MEN AND FELLOW TOWNSMEN East face, incised letters: M.S. THE REVEREND FREDERICK WILLIAM ROBERTSON M.A. PERPETUAL CURATE OF TRINITY CHAPEL BRIGHTON BORN 3RD. OF FEBRUARY 1816. DIED 15TH. OF AUGUST 1853. HONORED AS A MINISTER. BELOVED AS A MAN. HE AWAKENED THE HOLIEST FEELINGS IN POOR AND RICH. IN IGNORANT AND LEARNED. THEREFORE IS HE LAMENTED AS THEIR GUIDE AND COMFORTER BY MANY WHO IN THE BOND OF BROTHERHOOD. AND IN GRATEFUL REMEMBRANCE. HAVE ERECTED THIS MONUMENT. GLORY TO THE SAVIOUR. WHO WAS HIS ALL. West face, incised letters: TO THE REVD. F.W. ROBERTSON M.A. IN GRATEFUL REMEMBRANCE OF HIS SYMPATHY AND IN DEEP SORROW FOR THEIR LOSS. THE MEMBERS OF THE MECHANICS INSTITUTION AND THE WORKING MEN OF BRIGHTON HAVE PLACED THIS MEDALLION ON THEIR BENEFACTORS TOMB A.D. 1855. |
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Classification
| Categories: | Sculptural, Funerary, Religious, Free Standing, Commemorative |
| Object type1: | Marker |
| Object subtype1: | Commemorative stone |
| Object type2: | Relief |
| Object type3: | Shaft |
| Object subtype1: | Pylon |
| Subject type1: | Pictorial |
| Subject subtype1: | Group |
| Subject type2: | Figurative |
| Subject subtype1: | Group |
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Object Parts
| Part 1: | Stepped (2) base |
| Material: | Stone |
| Height (cm): | 80 |
| Width (cm): | 250 |
| Depth (cm): | 157 |
| Part 2: | Roundel |
| Material: | Bronze, patinated blue/green |
| Height (cm): | 58 |
| Width (cm): | 58 |
| Depth (cm): | 4 |
| Part 3: | Pylon |
| Material: | Stone |
| Height (cm): | 220 |
| Width (cm): | 190 |
| Depth (cm): | 117 |
| Part 4: | Rectangular relief |
| Material: | Bronze, patinated blue/green |
| Height (cm): | 54 |
| Width (cm): | 85 |
| Depth (cm): | 2.5 |
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Object Condition
| Overall condition: | Good |
| Risk assessment: | No known risk |
| Condition 1 of type: | Surface |
| Condition 1: | Metallic staining |
| More details: | Metallic staining under the reliefs |
| Condition 2 of type: | Structural |
| Condition 1: | Broken or missing parts |
| More details: | Inscription on roundel damaged with letters missing from first word |
| Date of on-site inspection: | 01/05/2008 |
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History
| History: | Subscribed by members of the Mechanics' Institution. Robertson was a radical preacher at Holy Trinity Church, Ship Street, Brighton.
The Extra-Mural Cemetery covers land formerly the open arable field of Scabe's Castle, a late-eighteenth-century farm with buildings in Hartington Road. These were demolished in the 1900s when Hartington Place and Hartington Terrace were developed. The Extra-Mural cemetery is the oldest of the three cemeteries on the land. It was originally a private burial ground, laid out on 28 acres in 1850 by the Brighton Extra-Mural Company, 6 acres being the gift of the Marquess of Bristol. The entrance was a castellated gateway with a round tower in Lewes Road, and there were two mortuary chapels designed by A.H.Wilds of which only the Anglican chapel remains. The cemetery was a favourite resort in the nineteenth century and even had a guide book published, but in 1956 the now redundant cemetery was purchased by the corporation and restored as an interesting and picturesque garden of remembrance which contains many impressive Victorian tombs, including those of several important figures in Brighton's history. In the driveway is the borough mortuary which opened in August 1962 and has between 600 and 700 admissions a year. (Encyclopaedia of Brighton by Tim Carder). The cemetery was consecrated on 14 November 1857 by the then Bishop of Chichester, Dr. A.T. Gilbert The Woodvale Cemetery was opened in 1857. The Woodvale crematorium and chapels are located in this cemetery. The burial ground is Grade II listed and until 1902 was known as the Brighton 'Parochial' cemetery. (Brighton and Hove City Council) Frederick William Robertson (known as Robertson of Brighton) (3 February 1816 – 15 August 1853) was an English divine. Born in London, the first five years of his life were passed at Leith Fort, where his father, a captain in the Royal Artillery, was then resident. The military spirit entered into his blood, and throughout life he was characterized by the qualities of the ideal soldier. In 1821 Captain Robertson retired to Beverley, where the boy was educated. At the age of fourteen he spent a year at Tours, from which he returned to Scotland, and continued his education at the Edinburgh Academy and university. In 1834 he was articled to a solicitor in Bury St Edmunds, but the uncongenial and sedentary employment soon broke down his health. He was anxious for, a military career, and his name was placed upon the list of the 3rd Dragoons, then serving in India. For two years he worked hard in preparing for the army, but, by a singular conjunction of circumstances and at the sacrifice of his own natural bent to his father's wish, he matriculated at Brasenose College, Oxford, just two weeks before his commission was put into his hands. He did not find Oxford wholly congenial to his intensely earnest spirit, but he read hard, and, as he afterwards said, ''Plato, Aristotle, Butler, Thucydides, Sterne, Jonathan Edwards; passed like the iron atoms of the blood into my mental constitution.'' At the same time he made a careful study of the Bible, committing to memory the entire New Testament both in English and in Greek. The Tractarian movement had no attraction for him, although he admired some of its leaders. He was at this time a moderate Calvinist in doctrine, and enthusiastically evangelical. Ordained in July 1840 by the bishop of Winchester, he at once entered on ministerial work in that city, and during his ministry there and under the influence of the missionaries Henry Martyn and David Brainerd, whose lives he studied, he carried devotional asceticism to an injurious length. In less than a year he was compelled to seek relaxation; and ‘going to Switzerland he there met and married Helen, third daughter of Sir George William Denys, Bart. Early in 1842, after a few months' rest, he accepted a curacy in Cheltenham, which he retained for upwards of four years. The questioning spirit was first aroused in him by the disappointing fruit of evangelical doctrine which he found in Cheltenham, as well as by intimacy with men of varied reading. But, if we are to judge from his own statement in a letter from Heidelberg in 1846, the doubts which now actively assailed him had long been latent in his mind. The crisis of his mental conflict had just been passed in Tirol, and he was now beginning to let his creed grow again from the one fixed point, which nothing had availed to shift: ''The one great certainty to which, in the midst of the darkest doubt, I never ceased to cling--the entire symmetry and loveliness and the unequalled nobleness of the humanity of the Son of Man.'' After this mental revolution he felt unable to return to Cheltenham, but after doing duty for two months at St Ebbe's,Oxford, he entered in August 1847 on his famous ministry at Trinity Chapel, Brighton. Here he stepped at once into the foremost rank as a preacher, and his church was thronged with thoughtful men of all classes in society and of all shades of religious belief. His fine appearance, his flexible and sympathetic voice, his manifest. sincerity, the perfect lucidity and artistic symmetry of his address, and the brilliance with which he illustrated his points would have attracted hearers even had he had little to say. But he had much to say. He was not, indeed, a scientific theologian; but his insight into the principles of the spiritual life was unrivalled. As his biographer says, thousands found in his sermons ''a living source of impulse, a practical direction of thought, a key to many of the problems of theology, and above all a path to spiritual freedom.'' His closing years were full of sadness. His sensitive nature was subjected to extreme suffering, arising mainly from the opposition aroused by his sympathy with the revolutionary ideas of the 1848 epoch. Moreover, he was crippled by incipient disease of the brain, which at first inflicted unconquerable lassitude and depression, and latterly agonizing pain. On 5 June 1853 he preached for the last time, and on 15 August he died. Robertson's published works include five volumes of sermons, two volumes of expository lectures, on Genesis and on the epistles to the Corinthians, a volume of miscellaneous addresses, and an Analysis of ''In Memoriam.'' See Life and Letters by Stopford A Brooke (1865). (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_William_Robertson) One of the bronze medallions was given by his congregation and one by the Mechanics Institution. Busts of Robertson were erected in the Royal Pavilion, later moved to the Town Hall and the Bodleian Library in Oxford. (Brighton Cemeteries) |
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References
| Source 1 : | |
| Title: | 'Brighton Cemeteries' |
| Type: | Book |
| Author: | Dale, Antony. |
| Edition: | 1995 Reprint |
| Page: | 11-12 |
| Publisher: | Brighton Borough Council. Brighton. |
| Source 2 : | |
| Title: | 'Encyclopaedia OF Brighton' |
| Type: | Book |
| Author: | Carder, Timothy |
| Publisher: | East Sussex County Libraries. Lewes. |
Further information: | |
| #http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_William_Robertson# | |
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Photographs
Author: Anthony McIntosh Copyright: Creative Commons |  Author: Anthony McIntosh Copyright: Creative Commons |
 Author: Anthony McIntosh Copyright: Creative Commons |  Author: Anthony McIntosh Copyright: Creative Commons |
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