This is commonly known as The Bucket Fountain but its official name is Piazza Fountain. The pivoted buckets are suspended on stems from which they are filled with water, they tilt when they become full and then empty noisily into lower buckets and/or eventually into the tiled pool in which they stand. Huws first hydraulic fountain was commissioned for The Festival Of Britain and stood outside a pavilion on the South Bank. He is generally regarded as a fountain designer of world class, yet very little of Huws's work is to be seen here - the best examples are now in New York and Japan. A monograph submitted to The University of Miami, states the not at first obvious fact that this was as much a sound sculpture as a water sculpture. After years of neglect it was refurbished when Wilberforce House was transformed into Beetham Plaza, but it is rare for it to be found in action.

Sources:
Steps to Parnassus: A Musical History of the Euramerican Soundscape
Walks Through History; Liverpool by David Lewis
Miami University

© Alan Maycock 2008