Page 35 - The Tale of Two Fountains

THE TALE OF TWO FOUNTAINS
It was just a sheer coincidence that the Rice Foundry, which took over the Eagle Foundry, was the contractor for supplying cast iron furniture for the Market Square Refurbishment Project in late 1980s – Furniture such as the bollards for electricity and water supply for the stalls, perimeter bollards, base collars and plates for the removable stalls. The Market Square, at that time, housed nearly 250 stalls. The design brief required these stalls to be capable of being removed temporarily for civic events in the Market Square.
During our research, we collected several old newspaper articles and cuttings on the lost Market Square fountain. There was one article in 1970 by Eric Instone, a well-known Industrial Archaeolo- gist, on Northampton Iron Foundries, relating a local tale that the Eagle Foundry had made a similar fountain to be shipped to Australia but was lost during the voyage1. However, we could not find any evidence for this. We have made contacts with two museums in Sydney, Australia to find out if such a fountain did find its way to Sydney but to date have not received any confirmation.
We were pleased to find a page from the Barwell & Co. catalogue published in 1865 which shows a drawing of the fountain with printed underneath ‘designed in 1863 and since erected in India and England’. This was intriguing and our enquiries with local historians and librarians indicated that this information was true2.
The puzzling question was, where in India could the twin fountain be erected? We still had the task of putting the pieces of the puzzle together.
Mumbai Fountain, Metro Junction, circa 1867
25