King Edward VII Memorial
statue in Birmingham, West Midlands, England, UK
The King Edward VII Memorial is a sculpture in memory of King Edward VII, relocated from Highgate Park to Centenary Square, Birmingham, England.
In 1910, the Birmingham Mail launched an appeal to erect a statue to Edward VII in order to commemorate his reign. Over £5,000 were quickly raised, and an area within Birmingham Children's Hospital was allocated for its location (then located on Ladywood Road near Five Ways).
Albert Toft was commissioned to craft the statue, but the project immediately ran into problems. The statue was to be over six feet tall, making it difficult to find a large enough piece of Carrara marble for its construction. This problem was overcome and the project was well underway through 1912.
The statue was unveiled in Victoria Square on St George's Day, 23 April 1913 by Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll. It stood next to a statue of Queen Victoria. However, soon afterwards these statues were criticized as being of "ill matched designs". The statue of Edward VII was moved to Highgate Park when Victoria Square was remodeled in 1951.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6411498. Authority coordinates are 52.480, -1.907. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1910, 1912, 1913 and 1951.
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This entry incorporates text from “King Edward VII Memorial” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.