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£100,000 statue stolen at cemetery
Second time sculpture is taken
POLICE are hunting for a listed statue worth £100,000 stolen from a cemetery.
The monument was snatched by art thieves from a “safekeeping shed” at St Pancras and Islington Cemetery in East Finchley last Wednesday.
It was created in the 1920s by Kilburn sculptor Sir William Goscombe-John, who trained under the renowned French artist Auguste Rodin.
It is the second time the bronze piece of a standing shrouded woman, believed to be a tribute to the artist’s dead wife, has been stolen.
For more than half a century the six-foot tall statue stood in the grounds of Hampstead Cemetery in Fortune Green, West Hampstead, before it was first stolen in 2001.
Then it turned up at a Surrey auction house after it was placed on the international register of stolen artefacts, the Art Loss Register. But since then, Hampstead Cemetery has undergone regeneration works, and it was being looked after at the East Finchley cemetery.
Chairman of the Friend’s of Hampstead Cemetery Bernard Heymann, had been negotiating the return of the statue, one of 18 tombs at the cemetery that is listed by English Heritage.
He said: “I’m upset because I’ve been aiming to get it back – but they’ve been dithering around with it up at East Finchley. They should have returned it earlier or taken better care of it.”
He also criticised Islington Council, which manages the cemetery, for not placing the monument on the register. He said: “If they don’t register it, it will be gone forever.”
The register demands a 20 per cent fee of the total value of anything they locate.
However Islington says it had tracked down members of the artist’s family, who are living in Canada. For this reason, they refuse to register the statue, although it is unclear if they registered it in 2000, when it was first taken.
A council press official said: “It’s not our piece of art – it is the family’s responsibility and it’s their art. It’s up to them to put it on the register.”
But she admitted they “seemed uninterested”.
She added that the council had not returned the staute to Hampstead because the family had failed to instruct them, and thought it would be safer to keep it in the storage depot rather than move it.
CCTV footage captured a white van pulling up outside the depot on Wednesday. The press official added: “It was a forceful entry – the hinges had been ripped off the door, it was not a tip-toe in job.”
A police spokesman said: “We are investigating the theft of a statue from the St Pancras and Islington Cemetery that was taken at approximately 3.45pm on Wednesday October 11.”
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