It was interesting to be reminded by Bruce Parker of the 1938 controversy between Winchester and Salisbury Cathedrals over the latter’s 13th-century rediscovered stained glass being relocated.

This brings to mind a much more recent ‘exchange’ that points in the opposite direction. Barbara Hepworth’s 1966 abstract bronze (with added colour) sculpture Construction (Crucifixion) Homage to Mondrian which had previously been unhappily sited in St Ives and then Portsmouth came to Winchester in 1997, with the encouragement of the Hepworth Estate Trustees.

It was beautifully and very sensitively positioned in the inner close of the Cathedral where it looked wonderful. Hepworth’s son-in-law, the former Director of the Tate Gallery Alan Bowness, commented that he felt she could not have hoped for a more appropriate setting and sitting.

Dean Michael Till, much to his credit, stoutly defended the work from ignorant attacks and resisted attempts by some of the locally rich and over-entitled to bribe him with donations for cathedral funds to have it removed. After around 20 years it somewhat mysteriously disappeared to Salisbury, allegedly ‘reclaimed’.

It is now disastrously located in a corner of Salisbury’s cloister, its rectangular and cruciform lines making for an insensitive and grotesque visual impact against the Gothic tracery.

Hepworth’s original notion of a possible Salisbury location for the third cast of her sculpture apparently had attached conditions that were not met and there was local opposition – which is the reason it went to Portsmouth. I cannot believe the sculptor herself could remotely have condoned its current unfortunate siting.

Christopher Gordon (former Hampshire Arts Officer, former chair of Hampshire Sculpture Trust),

Cornes Close,

Winchester

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