Huge animal sculptures to be placed on Swindon roundabouts

A huge statue of a shire horse will be placed at the Gable Cross roundabout Credit: LDRS

Proposals to install statues of several larger-than-life statues of animals on two roundabouts in Swindon have been revealed.

The huge animals are intended to evoke the natural and pastoral history of eastern Swindon and will be displayed at the White Hart and Gable Cross roundabouts.

The plans have been drawn up by Swindon Borough Council, which has now also given the proposals permission to go ahead.

Three different deer figures will be placed at the White Hart roundabout. There will be a huge, bellowing red deer stag at the Swindon end with a smaller hind with her fawn at the opposite end of the junction.

The sculptures of a hind and fawn will stand at the New Eastern villages entrance to the junction and will be slightly larger than life-size Credit: LDRS

At the Gablecross roundabout, an enormous rendering of a shire horse will be installed.

The figures will be built by Holly Hickmore and both roundabouts will also feature landscaping created especially for the sculptures by Trudi Entwistle.

The council said: “The stag is almost twice actual size and stands on a promontory against the tree canopy. The stag will ‘address’ the pedestrian walkway over the junction."

The mother and fawn composition will be smaller, being just a little larger than life-size. They will be in front of three oak trees, while there will be a carpet of spring bulbs.

A huge, bellowing red deer stag will be installed at the Swindon end of the junction Credit: LDRS

But it said the larger-than-life horse sculpture has been chosen "to remind us of how we manufactured and manipulated landscape, and how the plough horse transported the crops we grew and goods we made before and alongside canals and rail".

It added: “It has been designed to be at rest but turning its head to interact with the traffic and people moving around the site and waiting at the bus stop.

"Elements such as blinkers, harnesses and the trappings of the plough are suggested and intimated within the handling of the clay. This gives a dynamic, contemporary and exciting feel to the piece, while from a distance retaining the life-like and anatomically correct feel of the horse.”

As well as the horse on the Gablecross island, two large mounds will be constructed to resonate with "the context of ancient earthworks" and to suggest "the ploughing ridge lines of a field", the council said.

Credit: Aled Thomas, Local Democracy Reporter Service