Five sculptures for a Friday

I've decided to join in with Five on Friday. It's a weekly meme that I read on other people's blogs but haven't joined before. It's celebrating its anniversary this week. That means it has a history! (See the bottom of the post for a link to find other blogs that join in.)

Here's five sculptures that commemorate some history of their own. Enjoy.

This links to a post on my other blog, about the tunny fishing club in Scarborough in the 1930s. The sculpture is by Ray Lonsdale and this is just a detail of it. Huge fish used to swim just offshore in the North Sea and anglers caught them with rod and line in spectacular battles against the very powerful animals. I suppose it depends on your view of "sport" but it was popular with the rich and famous.

This sculpture is near a path around East Midlands Airport and was made by children at the local primary school with the help of a professional artist. It's all to do with flight - as you can just see from the insect on the first slab. They're about the size of stepping stones.

I took this one years ago during a business trip to Jersey. It's in St Helier and remembers the jubilation when the Channel Islands were liberated from the Germans at the end of WWII.

This one's a favourite. It's in Birmingham city centre and is called Industry and Genius. It commemorates type designer John Baskerville's factory, which stood nearby. The uprights represent individual letters from a press. They spell out Virgil, because that was the first book Baskerville produced.

Another Birmingham, and another favourite. They're Spitfires, of course, and the monument stands on a roundabout near where the fighter planes were once manufactured. It's huge. You can get the scale from the chevrons near the bottom of the photo. (It was also very bad weather when I was there!)