Historic City Park fountain works progressing well

Published on 09 August 2024

Restoration works on Launceston's iconic City Park Children's Jubilee Drinking Fountain are well underway.

The cast iron fountain was installed in City Park in 1897, having originally been commissioned to commemorate Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee in 1887.

It was one of many built by the Walter Macfarlane & Co. foundry in Scotland and shipped in its component segments all over the Commonwealth.

Earlier this year the fountain was disassembled into more than 100 different parts so that restoration works could be undertaken off site by expert contractors including Glasgow Engineering and Castings Tasmania.

he Council has utilised modern technology to complete 3D computer scans of each component of the fountain to help guide repair works. City of Launceston Mayor Matthew Garwood said the painstaking restoration process was progressing well, and it was expected the fountain would be returned to City Park in early 2025.

"This fountain has withstood the elements for 130 years in Launceston's City Park and is now receiving some much needed care and attention," Mayor Garwood said.

"It's a really painstaking and time consuming process to remove the various layers of paint and rust from more than 100 different parts of the fountain, many of which have been broken or poorly repaired over the years.

"However, the repair works are going really well and some of the pieces that have been completed are looking absolutely amazing."

City of Launceston Public Space Projects Officer Geoff Farquhar-Still said many of the pieces which had been restored looked like they had been delivered from the foundry only yesterday, such was the quality of the original castings that were revealed.

"The repair work that's been undertaken so far is also incredible, and many of these pieces now look very much like they would have when they were packed into crates by the Walter Macfarlane & Co. foundry back in the 1880s," Mr Farquhar-Still said.