The Cholera Monument is a memorial in Sheffield, England to the victims of a cholera epidemic of 1832. 402 victims of the disease were buried in grounds between Park Hill and Norfolk Park adjoining Clay Wood. Money from the treasurers of the Board of Health was set aside for a monument for the site.
The monument was designed by M. E. Hadfield, sculpted by Earp and Hobbs and completed in 1835. It is a neo-Gothic pinnacle and has a plaque naming John Blake, Master Cutler in 1832 and a victim of the epidemic and noting that the foundation stone was laid by poet James Montgomery.
The monument is situated in gardens laid out around the monument in the 1850s and next to Clay Wood, an ancient woodland. These were given to the city by the Duke of Norfolk in 1930. A shaded path built between 1971 and 1995 traverses the woods and leads from Fitzwalter Road to the monument gardens. The monument was struck by lightning in 1990 and the top removed for safety, rebuilding began in 2005 thanks to a grant and was completed in 2006.
A clay cobbled mound art installation was erected in 2004 representing the individuals who lost their lives.
The monument is grade II listed, and the grounds are a conservation area which had received a Green Flag Award.
Famous quotes containing the words cholera, monument, grounds, clay and/or wood:
““... In truth I find it ridiculous that a man of his intelligence suffer over this type of person, who is not even interesting, for she is said to be foolish”, she added with all the wisdom of people who are not in love, who find that a sensible man should only be unhappy over a person who is worthwhile; it is almost tantamount to being surprised that anyone deign having cholera for having been infected with a creature as small as the vibrio bacilla.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“I hope there will be no effort to put up a shaft or any monument of that sort in memory of me or of the other women who have given themselves to our work. The best kind of a memorial would be a school where girls could be taught everything useful that would help them to earn an honorable livelihood; where they could learn to do anything they were capable of, just as boys can. I would like to have lived to see such a school as that in every great city of the United States.”
—Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906)
“The best persuaded of himself, so crammed, as he thinks, with excellencies, that it is his grounds of faith that all that look on him love him.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Archaeologists have uncovered six-thousand-year-old clay tablets from southern Babylonia that describe in great detail how the adults of that community found the younger generation to be insolent and disobedient.”
—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)
“Lock in! Be alert, my acrobat
and I will be soft wood and you the nail
and we will make fiery ovens for Jack Sprat
and you will hurl yourself into my tiny jail
and we will take a supper together and that
will be that.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)