[MSN] A VALUABLE statue which has gone missing from a cemetery for a second time may never be found.

[Museum Security Network Mailinglist]

Historic statue is missing again
editorial at hamhigh.co.uk
19 January 2007
Matt Eley

A VALUABLE statue which has gone missing from a cemetery for a second time
may never be found.

Friends of Hampstead Cemetery fear the memorial by Sir William Goscombe John
to his wife has been stolen and sold on the black market.

The bronze statue of a woman shrouded in white was first pinched from the
cemetery in Fortune Green in 2001 but was returned after being spotted at an
auction a few months later.

It was then moved to East Finchley Cemetery but was stolen from a storage
area last autumn.

Marianne Collums, historian and secretary of the Friends of Hampstead
Cemetery, said: "I am still hopeful but being realistic it has been quite a
few months now.

"This should not have happened and the chances of it being recovered a
second time do not seem to be good. It was more by luck than anything the
first time [that it was found] and this time round we have heard nothing."

The statue was designed by the sculptor Sir William Goscombe John for the
grave of his Swiss wife Marthe, who died in 1923.

Sir William was born in Cardiff and studied art in London and Paris after
working with his father, a woodcarver. He settled in Kilburn and lived on
Greville Road until his death in 1952.

Sir William's work, which is often Gothic, is worth thousands of pounds,
although the exact price of the stolen memorial is not known. The value of
the 5ft bronze cast has been put at anything between £5,000 and £100,000.

Bernard Heymann, chairman of the Friends of Hampstead Cemetery, said: "It
was miraculously retrieved a few years ago but was again stolen from a
supposedly safe and locked shed at St Pancras Cemetery.

"The theft was filmed on a security camera which was passed to the police
but so far there has been no news."

A spokeswoman for Islington Council, which manages cemeteries in the area
jointly with Camden, said the statue was stolen from locked premises.

Ms Collums has co-written a book with Dick Weindling about the Greville
Estate where the sculptor lived. It is due to be published in the spring.

matt.eley at hamhigh.co.uk