Leazes Park, Newcastle

Leazes Park is the largest public park in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, located next to Newcastle United Football Club.  With a long history dating back to 1873, the park was in desperate need of refurbishment after over 100 years of public use.

In 2001 the Leazes Park Restoration Project were awarded £4.9 million from the Heritage Lottery Bid and Newcastle Council to restore the park to as close to the original design as possible.

The refurbishment was extensive and Haddonstone was approached to recreate the urns and statues that stood in the park during its first few decades.  This presented a challenge as only one surviving urn and a number of Victorian postcards were available to work from.  With such limited resources, our highly-skilled studio team produced small models (maquettes) to ensure the correct detailing and scale before embarking on producing full size models that were hand carved from scratch.  The team were then able to create the necessary moulds that were used to cast the significant designs.  All of the designs were produced using TecStone, our wet-cast limestone material, and in Bath colour.

Haddonstone also produced additional designs for the project which included a pair of imposing reclining lions weighing 1000kg each, six one metre tall classical urns with elaborate acanthus leaf decoration and a pair of elegant statues standing representing music and poetry.

The Leazes Park Urn, Music statue, Poetry statue and the Leazes Park Lion can now be purchased from Haddonstone directly.