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Introduction - The 'Mexico' Monument, St Anne's on the Sea

I am currently in the first year of a part-time PhD in History at Lancaster University. The focal point of my research is a lifeboat monument just along the promenade from the pier at St Anne’s on the Sea, a Lancashire resort. The work of Scottish sculptor William Birnie Rhind, it commemorates the thirteen-man crew of the lifeboat Laura Janet who lost their lives in an attempted rescue of the crew of the German barque Mexico on the night of 9th December 1886. Fourteen of the sixteen-man crew of the Southport boat Eliza Fernley were also lost, and the crew of the Lytham vessel Charles Biggs effected the rescue. The monument was unveiled by John Talbot Clifton, heir to the Clifton estate, on 23 May 1888.

The Mexico Monument on the eve of the unveiling, 22 May 1888
Red Rose Collections, Lancashire County Council

My study examines the disaster and commemoration, exploring how the monument came to provide an identity for the newly developing seaside town whilst contributing to its social and economic development. Along the way I am looking at the design of the monument and how it fits into wider patterns of memorialization and sculptural design. I will also consider attitudes to heroism and valour and how such qualities were epitomized across a variety of media during the late Victorian period. Primary source material in Lancashire Archives, particularly the 'Frank Kilroy Collection', has been invaluable in my research as have been the minute books and other material in the archives at Lytham St Anne's RNLI. Other primary material has included local newspapers and other  material from Lancashire Libraries and Sefton's Local Archives and the Atkinson Museum. 

When I began my PhD in September 2019 I could not have thought that some of the research would become so relevant. During the Covid crisis the notion of heroism has been much to the fore as the work of key workers was celebrated. The Black Lives Matter movement has also pushed monuments and memorials back into the public consciousness as we have started to re-assess our public monuments and the messages they convey.

'Stone Sermons' is an adaption and recontextualizing of a line from As You Like It, II, i.

And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.
I would not change it.

The word 'sermon' has mainly religious connotations but in the context of the play there is a broader suggestion. The OED, citing Shakespeare’s phrase, gives a definition as 'Something that affords instruction or example' and uses the phrase to epitomize this explanation.

Memorials can indeed be considered as 'sermons in stone', embodying not just commemorations of individuals and events but also the attitudes, ideas and mores of artists, commissioning bodies and, to a large extent, the dominant influence groups of the time. 


 Andrew Walmsley, July 2020

https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/history/about/people/andrew-walmsley




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Location: Lifeboat Monument, Lytham St Annes, Lytham Saint Annes FY8 1LS, UK

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