Almost 500 years ago, a wealthy and well-connected judge named Sir James Hales stepped into the River Stour near Canterbury to take his own life. Hales became popular under King Henry VIII, but refused to convert to Catholicism under the repressive regime of his daughter Mary and was imprisoned in the Tower of London.
Struggling with his mental health after his release in 1554, he drowned. But since suicide was a crime at the time, his widow was denied the right to inherit his estate, so she took the matter to court in a case that became so famous in the 16th century that it inspired Shakespeare’s depiction of suicide by drowning Hamlet’s Ophelia.
Next week, this Tudor tragedy will be remembered with the formal unveiling of a sculpture that has been installed under the waters of the River Stour in Canterbury, near the spot where Hales took his own life 470 years ago, inspired by his story and that of Shakespeare’s tragic heroine. .
The artwork, called Ophelia, is the work of British sculptor Jason deCaires Taylor, who created the world’s first underwater sculpture park near Grenada. Taylor, whose sculptures have been installed on reefs and seabeds around the world, is originally from Canterbury and grew up splashing in the Stour near his home.
After another of his river installations was damaged and required repair, Taylor became aware of the connection between the Stour, Hales and Shakespeare after reading a blog post about the case of Amy License, a local historian.
“The whole story about Ophelia holding on to the willow branches and falling in… I remember as kids holding on to the branches and swinging from side to side,” Taylor said. “So it was really fascinating to hear that the story had that background.”
His recycled glass sculpture, a figure of a woman lying on her back while her flower-strewn dress floats around her, also deliberately evokes a famous painting by Sir John Everett Millais. It was placed just below the water level next to the city’s medieval Westgate and is lit from within.
Taylor, who said environmental concerns were “the biggest reason I became an artist,” has installed sensors to measure the river’s temperature and transparency, which he hopes will feed into a dataset to share with local scientists. He is also researching technology that would allow the sculpture to monitor pollution and nitrate levels.
“I hope that people will ask more questions, that they will be interested and fascinated and want to know more about the history of the river and Canterbury,” he said.
License said it was “so important” to keep stories like Hales’s alive. Given that the judge killed himself while suffering religious persecution, she said, “Remembering Canterbury as a place of religious diversity is really important today. We have so many little stories like this that resonate today, I think they need to be captured and remembered.”
Stewart Ross, chairman of the Canterbury Commemoration Society, which commissioned the work, said: “Canterbury has a lot of artwork and is known as a heritage centre, but it doesn’t have a lot of new work. It’s so powerful because it’s brand new, brilliant modern art in a medieval setting. It’s very, very powerful and moving.”
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