2. Early work
Despite being a small market town with a long history derived from its association with Romsey Abbey and the Broadlands Estate, Romsey has remarkably few public works of art. In fact, it can only boast a large bronze of Lord Palmerston which dominates Market Place and a life-size marble of Romsey-born polymath Sir William Petty located in the west end of Romsey Abbey Church. In 2006, the Town Council installed a new pole and crown based on the town's Mace-head designed by Romsey artist Rob Johnson. Located in Market Place, it also conceals the distribution points for the coloured lights which illuminate the town at Christmas time. It is the only artistic addition to the town centre for 150 years.

The successful project team was set up towards the end of 2004 but earlier attempts to install a public work of art in the town went back more than a decade.

The first was in the 1990s with an elegant artistic interpretation of a water wheel proposed by a Society member. The structure was of stainless steel and large glass sheets but there were technical problems with the latter and in face of rising costs, the project had to be abandoned.

Following close on its heels was a project led by Test Valley Borough Council (TVBC) with the support of Society members and the Hampshire Mills Group to restore and display the waterwheel from Fox Mill (see inset watercolour by Rex Trayhorne). The wheel had been removed from the mill in the 1970s and placed in the County Museum store. Although this could not be described as a work of art it was another attempt to reflect the industrial past of the town which is rooted in its mills.

The project was fully funded and ready to go but at the last minute, and surprisingly in view of the wide publicity the project had received, Hampshire Buildings Preservation Trust claimed ownership of the wheel and refused to release it. Since some of the Trustees were also County councillors, there seemed to be no chance of resolving this dispute and this project was also abandoned.

The third attempt to install a work of art in the town was led by a group of Society members and although it hardly saw the light of day, it is worth recording for reasons which will become apparent in this report. Just as Chichester Cathedral has a splendid granite sculpture of its patron saint St Richard (installed in 2000) or Salisbury Cathedral has Frink’s famous bronze of the Madonna, it was proposed that Romsey should have a life-size bronze of St Ethelflaeda, a patron saint of Romsey Abbey Church. She would have stood in Church Place and welcomed visitors to the Abbey. This proposal proved to be very divisive. There were those who thought it a very beautiful concept but others, particularly some in the Church, who were astonishingly hostile to it. Whatever their reasons, this would not have been the right environment in which to seek funding so the idea was dropped. The Ethelflaeda project did however spawn the team of four Romsey and District Society members who went on successfully to commission the Charter Stone in time for the town's charter celebrations in 2007.

Abbey seal depicting Abbess Ethelflaeda

Later, and as a supplement to the design brief, the local history society, LTVAS, provided the artists with the ancient and modern names of the mills and the River Test and its braids.