In 1959 the inhabitants of Matching Green, east of Harlow in Essex, were horrified by the appearance of a 6 foot 3 inch statue of a naked lady in a village garden. The figure was the work of Horace Saville, the village blacksmith, and he claimed it was a model of how he wanted his future wife to look.

The statue had originally stood 5 feet high on Saville’s lawn, but after ‘somebody’ knocked it down he rebuilt it on a sturdy concrete plinth. The outraged locals included Mrs Harold Smith who thought the statue a ‘hideous monstrosity’ and Mr George Burnett who lived next door to Saville. He worried that the statue would attract day-trippers who would come to ‘gawp’. And presumably that is exactly what happened when Burnett spoke to the Daily Mirror and the paper published a photo’ of the statue. Saville was unperturbed and told the reporter that he was a ‘genuine bachelor’ who didn’t really know what a lady looked like ‘without her clothes’.

Saville (1904-1980) was 54 when he erected the statue of his dream wife and it doesn’t seem to have found him a partner. Nine years later he was still single, and it seems doubtful that his latest wheeze would attract suitors: he had taken to moulding his own dentures in concrete and coating them in a secret formula to make them sparkle.

The statue of a naked lady was soon joined by some other garden ornaments. In the years after her appearance Saville had sculpted a whole range of figures with no apparent connection. By 1973 there were statues of the Queen, Prince Philip, General de Gaulle, the broadcaster Cliff Michelmore, the Earl of Avon (presumably former Prime Minister Sir Anthony Eden), the devil waving a top hat and Horace Saville himself. One of best records of the garden found to date is this sketch which Raymond “Tim” Fieldhouse sent to his friend Jones in 1973. Fieldhouse had met Saville in Matching Green and described him as ‘a great old Essex character […] every bit as weird as one of his own creations, a real old eccentric’.

Further statues included a policeman, a racegoer, a huntsman, an army officer, a horse and jockey, and a gorilla with a bunch of bananas. Smaller sculptures could be found in the long grass of Saville’s wild garden, all with piercing blue eyes made from marbles.

Saville was very serious about the project to which he had dedicated his retirement, and a sign in the garden announced his creations as ‘Concrete Art’.  Horace could often be found at his gate chatting to visitors and showing the tools of his trade – an old table knife and a saucepan. A Mr Tyle who was given a tour of the sculptures in 1966 wrote to a local magazine to say that ‘anybody who has not had the pleasure of viewing these fine works of country art is missing a unique exhibition’.

Whilst perhaps not always popular in the village (they became known locally as ‘Horace’s Horrors’), today the body of work would be celebrated as Outsider Art, defined by the Tate as ‘art that has a naïve quality, often produced by people who have not trained as artists’.  But sadly there is nothing left to see: after Saville’s death in 1980 the statues were swept away*.

You can at least see the man himself – here he is promoting margarine in 1954.

* UPDATE September 2024: Huge thanks to the many people who have shared their memories of Horace and his garden (see the comments below). Particular thanks to Patrick Streeter for the very exciting news that one sculpture does survive – and it is the head of the man himself, as seen bottom left in one of the photographs above. Horace can be found in the garden of the Feast Room by Matching Church.

And thanks to Sarah Sage for sharing an example of Horace’s personal stationery complete with autograph and what is presumably a self-portrait.

UPDATE OCTOBER 2025: Thanks to Richard Keil for sharing these two images from his family’s collection. Both are dated 1967.

Does anyone remember the garden and statues? Your thoughts and comments are warmly welcomed – please scroll down to the foot of the page to get in touch. Thank you for reading.