14 Dec 07

The winners were presented with their certificates at the Divinity School

On 14 December 2007 Wantage MP and Shadow Arts Minister Ed Vaizey presented certificates to the winners of the ‘Millennium Myths and Monsters’ design-a-gargoyle competition. Nine children, aged between 11-14, attended the prize-giving ceremony in the University’s Divinity School.

They will see their designs transformed by a stonemason who will create nine new gargoyles, which will grace the northwest face of the Bodleian Library for years to come.

The winners are 11-year-old George O’Connor from Oxford for ‘Dodo’; 12-year-old Hannah Duckworth from Oxford for ‘Green man’; 12 year old Henry Chadwick from Oxford for ‘Three men in a boat’; 13-year-old Eva Masmanian from Oxford for ‘Tweedledum and Tweedledee’; 13-year-old Ben Bryant from Abingdon for ‘Wild Boar’; 13-year-old Alfie Turner from Longworth for ‘Sir Thomas Bodley’; 14-year-old Hayley Williams from Abingdon for ‘Aslan’; 14-year-old Kerrie Chambers from Bicester for ‘General Pitt Rivers’; and 14-year-old Alex Sermon from Abingdon for ‘From Myths to Monsters’ (based on Tolkien characters).

Winner George O’Connor said: ‘It will be really good to look back at it and think ‘look up! That is mine,’ and it will be sort of cool.’

Alfie Turner said: ‘I wanted to see Thomas Bodley as a gargoyle because it would be great for him to have a place; after all, he founded the library and the library is named after him.’

Eva Masmanian said: ‘Tweedledee and Tweedledum are known worldwide and for them to be made into a gargoyle is amazing. I would like people to see them up there and laugh.’

Commenting on his choice of gargoyle design, ‘Three men in a boat’, Henry Chadwick said: ‘It was inspired by my art teacher. He just wrote random things on the board and it slipped into my head. I had just read the book and I thought about the significance of the Thames with Oxford: Oxford would not be here without the Thames.’

Mr Vaizey said: ‘I don’t think there will be another chance for hundreds of years for anyone else to design a gargoyle for the Bodleian and these guys are all children at the moment, but their great-great grandchildren will be coming to the Bodleian to see the gargoyles that their ancestors designed. It is an amazing thing.

‘It was a brilliant idea to have a competition to get schoolchildren and engaged and through that process they will learn a lot about Oxford’s history, a lot about the Bodleian and a lot about gargoyles.’

The competition was launched to find ideas based on one of three themes – myths, monsters or people that have a historical connection with Oxfordshire within the last millennium. The University has to replace the original gargoyles because they are extensively damaged and there are no historical records of what they once looked like. The competition judges were sculptor Martin Jennings; Director of Oxford Preservation Trust, Debbie Dance; Bodley’s Librarian, Dr Sarah Thomas; and Oxford University Head of Building Conservation, Isobel Hughes.

The winning entries will be on display in the Proscholium at the entrance to the Bodleian Library from 2 January to 18 January 2008.