The Springthorpe Memorial is an elaborate Victorian era memorial located within Boroondara General Cemetery in Kew, Victoria, a suburb of Melbourne, Australia.[1] The memorial was built by Melbourne doctor John Springthorpe,[2] in honour of his wife, Annie Springthorpe (née Inglis), who died in 1897 at the age of 30 while giving birth to their fourth child. Construction began in 1897, and the memorial was unveiled in 1901. The Springthorpe Memorial is listed on the Victorian Heritage Register.[3]
The centrepiece of the memorial, commissioned by the grieving Dr Springthorpe, is a marble sculpture by Bertram Mackennal. A figure of the deceased lies on a sarcophagus while an angel, standing beside her, places a wreath (now missing) by her head. A sorrowful, draped female figure sits beside the sarcophagus, clutching a lyre.
The sculpted figures are housed in a structure derivative of a Greek temple, designed by Melbourne architect Harold Desbrowe-Annear. It has dark marble columns, granite pediments and entablatures adorned with serpent-head gargoyles at each corner, and a stained glass domed roof. The latter is made up of hundreds of ruby-coloured glass pieces supported by radiating ironwork. On a fine day sunlight, streaming through the roof, imparts a reddish glow on the sculpture below.
The memorial is located in a garden setting which the curator of Melbourne's Royal Botanic Gardens, William Guilfoyle, was commissioned to design. However, the layout seen today probably has little in common with his original design.
The base of the memorial, surrounded by an iron picket balustrade, is paved with red tiles which have various verses inscribed on them in gold lettering. There are also inscriptions on each pediment and entablature of the temple structure, in both English and Greek.
Nowhere on the memorial is there any mention of the deceased's name, the most specific reference being the following inscription:
- My own true love
- Pattern daughter perfect mother and ideal wife
- Born on the 26th day of January 1867
- Married on the 26th day of January 1887
- Buried on the 26th day of January 1897
- ^ Jalland, Pat (25 March 2002), "A Magnificent Obsession", The Age, retrieved 9 April 2011
- ^ Egan, Bryan (1990). "Springthorpe, John William (1855–1933)". Australian Dictionary of Biography. Canberra: National Centre of Biography, Australian National University. ISBN 978-0-522-84459-7. ISSN 1833-7538. OCLC 70677943. Retrieved 9 April 2011.
- ^ "Springthorpe Memorial, Boroondara General Cemetery, Victorian Heritage Register (VHR) Number H0522, Heritage Overlay HO64". Victorian Heritage Database. Heritage Victoria.