Horsham District Council partners up with the Shelley Memorial Project to help honour town’s most famous son

A painting of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 - 1822), in Rome, by Joseph Severn. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

The Project is a Community Interest Company that aims to create a lasting public memorial to the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley.

While it has worked on and off with the council for several years, securing a site for the memorial in Horsham Park, a more secure agreement has now been put in place.

During a meeting of the cabinet, members approved a Memorandum of Understanding between the two parties.

James Brooks (Lib Dem, Broadbridge Heath) said: “Under the previous administrations, this help was conducted on an ad hoc basis and, as a result, there has at times been a lack of clarity on the roles of each party and on their relationship.

“This Memorandum of Understanding has been developed and agreed with the Shelley Memorial Project to make clear their relationship with us for the future. It puts us on a firm footing going forward.

“In addition to officer support, and to providing a site for the memorial artwork, [the council] has already committed to funding £10,000 towards the realisation of the public artwork and this will be awarded providing the project achieves its funding targets.”

A Memorandum of Understanding is essentially a document laying out the broad outline of an agreement between two or more parties.

Details about Shelley from Horsham Museum state: “Born in Warnham in 1792, Shelley found early inspiration in the landscape around Horsham, learning to sail on the pond at Warnham.

“The Shelley family were prominent within Horsham society and Shelley’s grandfather secured a Baronetcy which the poet would have inherited had he o utlived his father.”

Shelley died in 1822, aged just 29.

While the cabinet fully supported the partnership, there was concern from Tony Hogben (Con, Colgate & Rusper) about the amount of time officers have spent on the project.

Adding that he was ‘not 100% convinced’ that the project would ever raise the money it needed, he said: “We’ve committed a lot of time to this project and I hope we see some fruition at the end of it.”