Old Wall and Gates, Marshalsea (c) Neil Sinclair, 2012

In a dramatic moment worthy of a Charles Dickens plot, the winning design for a monument in Southwark to honour the great English novelist will be unveiled on Tuesday 7th February, the 200th anniversary of his birth.

The design will be selected by a commitee of representatives from local organisations including Southwark Council and Bankside Open Spaces Trust.

It’s just possible the chosen sculpture will be a character from one of Dickens’s novels, as the world famous Victorian author was known to oppose any monument in his image.

Preferred location for the sculpture is next to St George the Martyr church at the junction of Borough High Street and Tabard Street.
Known as Little Dorrit’s church after the central character in the partly autobiographical Dickens novel, St George the Martyr was where Amy Dorrit was baptised and married. More famously, it was where she slept one night after being locked out of the adjacent Marshalsea Prison where she lived with her family.
St George the Martyr and the site of the old Marshalsea prison will be two of the stops on Neil Sinclair’s Dickens in Southwark walks on Saturday 18th February and Sunday 25th February.

He’ll also be visiting the nearby Lant Street site where young Charles Dickens took lodgings while his father was behind bars in the Marshalsea.