What has the poor old Johnson Drinking Fountain done wrong?
Installed in Hall Place in 1874, banished to the depths of Ayscoughfee Gardens in 1954, and now, it’s suggested, to be exiled in the distant cemetery.
There could be few less suitable places for it than amongst various “little chapels and other structures”.
It needs to stand tall and proud again as the focal centre piece of Hall Place or, better, the Market Place – for which it was originally designed.
In a cemetery it is bound to be perceived as just another (somewhat pretentious) funerary memorial to somebody-or-other who died and was buried there.
Whereas, as the centre piece of a central public space, it immediately registers as important, attracting attention, arousing visitors’ curiosity, an obvious place at which to arrange to meet.
And indeed it is important. Far from being a funerary monument, it is a grand celebration, a great thank you in stone.
The lady it honours is Miss Mary Ann Johnson, who was very much alive in 1874.
The act it celebrates was her gift of £150,000 (in modern money) to bring pure water to large areas of the town previously without it.
The form it took was apt: a functioning, usable emblem of the pure drinking water her gift had made available (before the poor had had only more or less contaminated well water. Hence the high death rate).
Thus, the fountain commemorates a key moment in the town’s public health, its social history, its heritage.
Mary Ann Johnson is a woman of whom we can be proud. Only a town centre site could do justice to her invaluable contribution to its past well being – along with an information plate and a little landscaping perhaps.
Moreover, with South Holland District Council now committed to increasing footfall to regenerate the town centre, the fountain is a feature ready-made to uplift the centre and help give it the kind of individual character and vitality that will enhance its attractiveness. Why waste it? In no way will putting the fountain in the cemetery increase footfall in the centre.
PS – Nothing above should be taken as criticising the otherwise excellent work of the cemetery improvement group – except for this one suggestion.
John Charlesworth
Spalding
