The sign of the Dog and Pot, once a familiar and well known Southwark landmark in its day was originally outside an ironmonger’s shop on Blackfriars Road from the 1780’s and remained there until 1932, when it was removed to the Cuming Museum in Walworth Road where it can still be seen. The sign however was much more than just a shop’s sign, it was used as a design on Victorian coal hole covers, those round metal plates that covered the delivery hatches to coal cellars. One of these was the inspiration for the sculpture. The firm of J.W.Cunningham, ‘wholesale and retail ironmongers, steel and grindstone merchants’ at No. 196 Blackfriars Road, put it on their plates in 1882, and between 1849 and 1857, when the shop was owned by the much more celebrated firm of Hayward Brothers, a small version of the sign appeared on their plates.
Charles Dickens, however made the sign a far more significant matter. When he worked as a child in what to him was the notorious blacking factory at Hungerford Stairs near Charing Cross, his father was taken as a prisoner for debt to the Marshalsea Prison in Borough High Street. So 12-year-old Charles was found lodging nearby, in Lant Street. He was quoted in later years as saying;
‘My usual way home was over Blackfriars Bridge, and down that turning in the Blackfriars Road which has Rowland Hill’s chapel on one side, and the likeness of a golden dog licking a golden pot over a shop door on the other’.
The Life of Charles Dickens Volume One 1812-1842
This was at the junction with Union Street, on the south side, where Rowland Hill House now stands. The Ironmonger’s shop at the corner was eventually No.196. The sign indicated that the shop sold fire dogs (iron bars to support logs in a fire) and pots to hang above the fire. These were symbols of hearth and home in the days when everyone used an open fire for cooking and heating. The pot can also represent a coal scuttle. The dog was made of pinewood and stood with a tilted pot on a scrolled bracket. There is some debate about the date of the sign in the museum, but it is now believed to be some decades older than the late 18th century. But more than likely to have hung outside an inn, before an ironmonger acquired it. Although the Dog and Pot has now outlived its shop, the use of coal plates and the wider use of open fires in London, it still remains a valued symbol of the local past and of Dickens’s part in it.
Much discussions had taken place over the past five years of creating a lasting tribute to Dickens’s life and his bicentenary, and Southwark’s cultural heritage by installing a replica of the old Dog and Pot sign. Funding was awarded in 2011 from section 106 contributions from developments in the Blackfriars Road area to enable this project to go ahead.
The replica sculpture of the dog is made from seasoned Elmwood and carved by Mike Painter, a Warwickshire based Master Carver and sculptor who has worked on Windsor Castle, St Paul’s Cathedral and the Palace of Westminster. The design process was also overseen and initiated by artist Jason Brooks. The new dog and an original iron pot sit on a specially commissioned bracket designed by metalwork sculptor Owen Cunningham, and mounted on a 4.5 metre column. At its base is a replica of the coalhole cover that inspired the sculpture, and an engraved quote by Charles Dickens. The sculpture creates a landmark to celebrate Southwark’s rich cultural heritage, and can be found at its original location on the corner of Union Street and Blackfriars Road, near the frontage of Rowland Hill House.
On the 6th February 2013, the sculpture was officially unveiled by Charles Dickens great great grandson Mark Dickens, who is also President of the Dickens Fellowship. The Charles Dickens Primary school choir welcomed the new dog to the borough at the event with songs with their own version of the song 'Consider Yourself' from the film 'Oliver' and other London connected tunes.