S&J Watts & Co - The Sentry
In the lofty foyer of this former textile warehouse is Charles Jagger’s unforgettable Manchester Sentry.
The Manchester Sentry was commissioned by the Watts family for their textile heaquarters in Manchester to mark the sacrifice of several hundred of their staff.
The names of those killed from the Watts company are listed opposite the Manchester Sentry.
The statue was erected in 1921. After surviving the 1940 blitz that destroyed so many buildings around the Piccadilly area, it was vandalised sometime in the noughties when the bayonet mounted on the rifle was stolen. No doubt it was a drunken prank in a hotel that promotes cheap drinks, but it damaged the balance of the artwork.
The sculptor, Charles Sargeant Jagger, originally from Rotherham, had served in the war and had been wounded. He knew the war from the inside.
He wanted his sculptures to be the opposite of derring-do idealism and show something of the grit of the fighting man and life in the trenches. His species of 'realism' was at odds with the mood of the day, when all the most progressive artists were adopting the various schools of Modernism. At the same time Jagger's realism was far removed from the melodrama and sentimentality of much art before 1914.
To find the cache :
There is an inscription below the Sentry’s right boot.
A = the number of letters in the first word on the second line.
B = (the number of letters in the first word on the second line minus the number of letters in the last word on the first line. Multiply this number by the amount of initials.)
C = the number of letters in the first word on the last line plus the amount of initials.
D = the number of letters in the first word on the second line minus the number of letters in the last word on the third line.
E = the number of letters in the first word on the second line minus the number of letters in the last word on the first line.
F = the number of letters in the first word on the second line minus the number of letters in the first word on third line
Cache can be found at
N53 28.ABC W002 14.DEF
***** PLEASE NOTE IMPORTANT *****
CACHES ARE NOT ALLOWED TO BE PLACED ON ACTUAL MEMORIALS OR WITHIN THE BOUNDARY OF SUCH
AT ALL TIMES PLEASE TREAT LOCATIONS OF MEMORIALS WITH RESPECT