Plans for permanent Horsham memorial to poet Shelley move step forward

A planning application has now been lodged with Horsham District Council to place the memorial in Horsham Park.

The Shelley Memorial Project and the council have been working together for a number of years to install a public artwork which would commemorate Percy Bysshe Shelley who was born within the Horsham district just two miles from the town centre.

Shelley spent much of his formative years growing up in Horsham and is renowned as Horsham’s most famous citizen.

If planning permission is granted, it is proposed to site the memorial on a grassed triangle of land at the North Street entrance to Horsham Park opposite the railway station.

A public consultation over the design of the memorial was conducted before finally being decided. The memorial will, in fact, be the second to be featured in Horsham in honour of the poet.

A controversial artwork by Angela Conner entitled ‘Rising Universe’ was installed in West Street in Horsham town centre and later became locally known as the Shelley Fountain.

It featured a large globe that filled with water as it rose and fell but it regularly failed to work properly and was eventually removed in 2016 after becoming too expensive to repair.

The Shelley Memorial Project says that the new memorial aims to ‘facilitate a fitting permanent public memorial to Shelley for public enjoyment inspiration and education, as well as celebrating contemporary poetry.’

It says on its website: “Shelley is one of the major English Romantic poets and is internationally known as one of the most influential poets in the English language.

“His fame and its enduring nature is particularly remarkable in view of his early death in 1822 at the age of 29. His writings are said to have influenced an impressive list of key figures in literature, philosophy and politics including Thomas Hardy, George Bernard Shaw and WB Yeats.”