Imagine Trafalgar Square without its lions or the fountain, the Old Bailey without the Scales of Justice and dozens of plinths without their statues.
For 150 years the Morris Singer Art Foundry ensured that the parks and public spaces of London and other cities around the world were populated by figures captured in bronze. But governments have cut back on grand monuments and yesterday the foundry went into administration.
It started in 1848 as the J W Singer Foundry in Frome, Somerset, creating ecclesiastical metalwork, but soon turned to casting monuments to Empire. In recent years the foundry has had an itinerant existence.
Since 2005 it has been based in Braintree, Essex, after a previous period of insolvency when it fell victim to the duplicity