Suitable for all ages

Chenies Street Chambers       Historical Society

Camden Leisure & Community

CHARITY
WARNING: large file (168k).
Image scanned in by Jaqueline Powell. Thanks, Jackie.

"Charity," one of four panels sculpted by the Victorian artist Ellen Mary Rope (1855- 1934) for the Chicago World Exhibition in 1893 (Faith, Hope and Heavenly Wisdom were the other panels.) They were later placed in the chapel in the basement of Chenies Street Chambers, through the intervention of Octavia Hill. Two of the four panels remain, the other two were taken out while workmen were fixing the dryrot in the Council flat in the 1970's and it is rumoured that they placed on a skip. The tips of two of the angels' wings are still visible in the architrave above the door of Flat 3, where Camden Council put up the walls for the flats through the panels during the rebuilding of the building in 1947. They are obscured even more by being sprayed (as were the Victorian Wall tiles) with the purple porta-fleck paint used for the communal walls in 1990.

USEFUL LINKS:

Suffolk Churches, Ellen Mary Rope, and other artistic members of her family:
http://www.suffolkchurches.co.uk/blaxhall.htm   (stained glass window)
http://www.suffolkchurches.plus.com/leiston.html  (plaster relief panel to the Nativity)

Ellen Mary Rope - family Tree
http://www.arthur.rope.clara.net/tree.htm

exhibition catalogue: Ellen Mary Rope: the Poet Sculptor
http://www.blairman.co.uk/publications.html

dissertation on women sculptors (including Ellen Mary Rope)
British Nineteenth Century Female Sculptors, and the Impact of Available Artistic Opportunities
Chin Man Li, Department of Fine Art, University of Leeds, 1999
http://chinnyli.tripod.com/dissertation/b19cw-0.htm

'Hope'