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SE1’s replica of Trafalgar Square fourth plinth reduced to rubble

London SE1 website team

It's been an unlikely fixture of a dead-end side street in SE1 for the past nine years, but the full-size replica of Trafalgar Square's empty fourth plinth in County Street has now been demolished.

SE1’s replica of Trafalgar Square fourth plinth reduced to rubble
The artwork pictured in 2012
SE1’s replica of Trafalgar Square fourth plinth reduced to rubble
The pile of rubble on Sunday 22 February

Stephen Hall's artwork – entitled Phantom – was installed in 2011 outside the Cul de Sac Gallery.

A year later a mini garden was created at the foot of the plinth.

In 2013 the piece was replicated in Munich's Wittelsbacherplatz as part of a public art festival.

"We wanted to bring a bit of contemporary art and the high-end culture that Trafalgar Square promotes right here into County Street, to the New Kent Road and the Elephant & Castle, and to do our bit to promote the regeneration of the area," Stephen Hall told us in a 2012 interview.

But with the Cul de Sac Gallery's lease expiring at the end of February, the artwork has now been reduced to a pile of rubble.

• There is more on the County Street fourth plinth in the Winter 2020 issue of Southwark Council's The Elephant Magazine.

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