Original model for Nelson's Column on show

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The original model which won the competition for the design of Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square in 1838 is going on display for the first time at the National Maritime Museum next week.

Standing nearly 7ft tall and made of Bath stone, it will be a key feature of Maritime London, a new permanent exhibition examining London's international pre-eminence as a maritime centre, which opens on 4 April.

"The model shows some differences from the monument we know, notably in having a flight of steps at the front," said John Graves, the museum's curator of exhibitions.

"The lions were there although they didn't finally arrive until 1867, nearly 30 years after the column was erected. It became something of a standing joke that there were four empty plinths.

"The monument was paid for by public subscription and they had trouble raising the money. By 1838, the fact that Nelson had saved our skins at Trafalgar was fast receding into history."

The model, designed by architect William Railton, was loaned to the museum in 1958 by a London steeplejack who bought it from a stonemason some years earlier. Badly damaged in the Blitz, it has now been restored.

Elsewhere in the gallery, visitors will find wreckage from a Zeppelin shot down over the Thames estuary by anti-aircraft fire in 1915 as it attempted to bomb the docks.

They will also see a two-ton remnant salvaged from the Baltic Exchange after it was bombed by a terrorist in 1992, and only manoeuvred into the gallery with considerable difficulty.

And Mr Graves highly recommends a visit to the 17th century shopfront which was an entrance to Lloyd's Coffee House, an early meeting place for ship insurers that eventually became today's global enterprise, Lloyd's of London. Now it will serve as an entrance to the exhibition.

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