0 comments
A pride of lions have made their home in Waterloo to raise awareness for animal conservation.
It looks like London has a thing for lions – whether they be roaming around Regent’s Park Zoo, standing guard beneath Nelson’s column, or singing on stage in the West End.
Evidently the city is the perfect place for Born Free’s new outdoor exhibition, which has erected 25 bronze big cats in Millennium Green, just a short walk from Waterloo station.
Born Free is a wildlife charity that fights to improve the welfare of wild animals. It was founded in 1984 by Virginia McKenna OBE, Will Travers OBE, and Bill Travers MBE. Virginia and Bill were both actors who starred in the 1966 British film Born Free, which tells the true story of Elsa the lioness – who was orphaned as a cub and raised by game warden George Adamson and his wife Joy.
Elsa now proudly stands atop a vintage 4×4 as the centerpiece of the exhibition.
She is not the only sculpture with a story. Each lion was made in the likeness of a well-known wild cat. One of the cuter additions is a cub called Christian who was sold in 1969 by Harrods (back when the department store had an exotic pet shop) and later returned to the wild by the aforementioned George Adamson.
