P&O Navigation Statue

myminifactory

A statue at the Leadenhall Building (The Cheesegrater), Leadenhall Street, London. The statue reads NAVIGATION across the base and was originally located on the offices of the Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Company (P&O). The figure is holding a cruise ship. Date: 1920s Given the dates of the sculptor (b.1883) the figure was clearly not on the 1884 building at no.122. Royal Museums Greenwich provide some information: "... the figure of ‘Navigation’ originally stood ... looking down from a recess in the facade at the junction of Leadenhall Street and St Mary Axe." The other addresses that P&O took over are all to the west of 122 whereas St Mary Axe is (or was, at the time) a few numbers to the east. However the 1940s-60s OS map shows a large single building occupying the whole of the corner with St Mary Axe, which suggests that P&O took over all the buildings up to St Mary Axe and built something with this figure on the corner. (text credit) 156 photos taken in October 2020 with a Sony a6000 and processed in Reality Capture.