Page 37 - The Tale of Two Fountains

THE TALE OF TWO FOUNTAINS
tre with other end of the street opening on to the town’s Market Square. She used to visit the Market Square to recreate her memories of the magnificent Mumbai fountain! She added her interest in the fountain and research for the ‘twin’ fountain in Mumbai on her BBC profile.
A replica of the fountain was shipped to India from the Eagle Foundry and stood not far from her school in Mumbai. She mentioned “that our quest for the fountain was continuing.’’ This generated a lot of interest in the story of the fountain both locally and elsewhere with people who remembered the Market Square fountain. Jona was contacted by many listeners about their memories of the Northampton fountain.
One of the most interesting and pertinent emails Jona received was from the great-great-grand- daughter of William Atkinson, the artist/designer of the fountain. She recalls how William Atkinson started working as a designer in the iron industry. Judith James mentioned in the email that her mother remembered that the name ‘W.Atkinson’ was engraved on a panel on the fountain. This was confirmed when we did further research into this as seen in the photographs in the next chapter.
But let us take you back to a quote from an article ‘’ The Colours of Northampton’’ by the Northamp- ton author, Ernest Reynolds in a local magazine, Northampton Town Affairs (Vol. 1 No. 8 December 1952).
‘‘I remember one Christmas morning in Bombay when suddenly turning a corner, I encoun- tered the Fountain of Northampton Market Square. No, this was nothing to do with dreams, surrealist fantasies of the unconscious or a Christmas Eve hangover, but a sober fact. There it stood, the identical familiar bright green Fountain, every cast-iron twirl, scroll and volute the same, – obviously cast in the same mould in some Victorian ironworks of the 1860’s, so that while to one specimen fate had allotted a permanent domicile in Northampton, to another it gave an eternal home beneath the glistening Indian sky.
For us, his article sparked off a huge interest and renewed enthusiasm in tracing the whereabouts of the fountain in Mumbai. During our visit to Mumbai in the late 90s, we decided to look for the fountain either near to its original site or in one of the museums in the city. Our first point of call was the original site at the Metro Cinema junction but alas it was not to be seen there! We were informed that it had been moved to a new location to make way for a new traffic scheme in the area. Our next step was to visit some local museums in South Bombay to get more information which could help us to trace its whereabouts.
Finally after spending the best part of our holiday looking for the Fitzgerald fountain, our research took us to the Prince of Wales Museum, (now called the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu San- grahalaya) near Jona’s University. We met the Director of the Museum, Mr S. V. Gorakshkar, a very knowledgeable and helpful person passionate about history and conservation. He had a look at the information we had collected and pointed us in the direction of what was previously the Victoria & Albert Museum, now known as the Dr.Bhau Daji Lad Museum, named after a local doctor and edu- cationalist, who was a strong supporter of the museum.
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