Bunyan Meeting Bronze Chapel Doors

Created 1868 (installed 1876). Sculptor: Frederick Thrupp
Location: Bunyan Meeting, Mill Street

Bedford Town Centre Book Home |The Doors | The Sculptor | Images

Clearly, these are doors, not statues, but they are outstanding examples of a sculptor working in bronze to produce images in relief of scenes from John Bunyan' s book The Pilgrim' s Progress. Although presented, on 10 June 1876, to this Independent Congregational church, rather than the public at large, they are clearly visible from the pavement outside the entrance and the members welcome the public approaching to admire them. The 9th Duke of Bedford, who two years earlier had presented the statue of John Bunyan to the town, bought these heavy bronze doors (which had been created several years earlier and exhibited in London) and donated them because Bunyan had been a minister there in the late 1600s. The doors are inspired by the famous doors to the Baptistery in Florence, which in that case illustrate scenes from the bible, sculpted by Ghiberti.

Find out more about John Bunyan

The Sculptor

Frederick Thrupp (1812-1895) was a student at the Royal Academy Schools, London from 1830 and later lived and worked in Rome. He then set up a large gallery and studio in London and exhibited his sculptures at the Royal Academy regularly until 1880 and at the British Institution between 1837 and 1862. His work includes a marble statue of William Wordsworth in Westminster Abbey of 1854. In 1860 he exhibited a statue of John Bunyan and in 1968 he first exhibited, at the Royal Academy, these bronze doors which you now see, with ten panels illustrating The Pilgrim' s Progress. He made a speciality of sculpture in relief, in the style of Renaissance models, in series or cycles. Many of his best works reflect his deeply-held religious beliefs.