Exploring the rather charming little village of Peckforton in Cheshire, one might stumble across a rather unusual garden ornament. Tucked into a hedge, bordering a garden, is a huge stone elephant carrying a castle on its back. This was carved by the local stonemason, John Watson, and all sorts of stories are told of its history.

The 1846 tithe map shows that the Watson family’s house and garden was just outside the village, where they also rented fields and crofts totalling a little over 5 acres. Their benevolent landlord was John Tollemache (1805-1890) of Peckforton Castle, who believed the labouring man should have ‘three acres and a cow’. In the 1851 census Watson (c.1799-1875) gives his employment as ‘Stone Master employing 3 men’: presumably two of these were his sons, George and Robert, who are both listed as stonemasons. In 1860 he is listed in a directory as ‘stonemason and quarry owner’.

Tollemache (Baron Tollemache from 1876) built Peckforton Castle to a design by Anthony Salvin in 1844-50, and the resulting vast turreted and battlemented pile has been hailed as ‘one of the great buildings of its age’. The faux-mediaeval fortification enjoyed views to the genuine ruins of Beeston Castle.

Watson quarried the Peckforton Stone for the new bridge across the Dee in Chester in 1827 and he is also thought to have worked on Peckforton Castle. Not content with quarrying and carving all day, the elephant was apparently the work of his evenings – there’s even a story that the feckful Watson worked after sunset with his sons holding candles. The earliest mention is in an 1860 Cheshire history and gazetteer, which noted the elephant ‘in the garden occupied by Mr John Watson’, adding that it had been placed there ‘about two years ago’. By that date Watson and family had moved into the heart of Peckforton village. One newspaper report suggests that the statue was moved to its current location from its original site: if true it would have been a mammoth task.

No one seemed able to accept that Watson carved the Elephant and Castle purely as a decorative object, and from around 1900 a story circulated that it was built as a bee-hive. But the windows were once glazed, making access for bees somewhat difficult  – to say nothing of the lack of means for a beekeeper to extract the honey.

Sadly nothing seems to survive to explain why Watson chose an elephant and castle as his subject. Was he inspired by the ancient carved elephant with howdah on its back on a pew in the Quire of Chester cathedral? Had he made the trip to Liverpool in 1852 to see ‘Wombwell’s Royal and Monster Menagerie’, complete with ‘two largest elephants’ and a calf? Or travelled even further afield and seen the Elephant and Castle sculpture at Bomarzo in Italy? Some sources claim he was referencing the crest of the Corbett family, which does indeed feature an elephant and castle, but it is hard to substantiate the family’s link to the village. The Peckforton proboscidean remains a wonderful mystery

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