A clean up of the statues on Miller Park’s fountain has been stopping Prestonians in their tracks in recent weeks.

The fountain has been cordoned off for the past couple of months as maintenance work takes place.

Campaign group Preserving Preston’s Heritage believe an earlier restoration attempt was 20 years ago and the problem has been exacerbated recently as the group claims the old restoration as the standard for recent repairs rather than the beauty of the original. 

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Ella Lucia from Preserving Preston’s Heritage said: “We are all as shocked and horrified as everyone else in Preston it seems – the comments on our post about it says it all!

“We are curious to know who did the work and who signed this off as being an acceptable standard of completion.

“This could’ve been an opportunity for the fountain to be sensitively restored to as close to their original form as possible, but instead they chose to do…whatever that is! 

“The fact they had an opportunity to fix them and get somebody of actual skill to restore them and they didn’t, they’ve just gone back to how they were in 2007. I think it just says it all doesn’t it.”

Facebook comments from Prestonians on a post about the cleaned up fountain include: “The heads look dreadful. They are a different colour to the bodies, the facial features look like elves. This needs rectifying ASAP.

“I honestly checked the date on the post to see if it was an April fool.

“The heads look awfully amateur.

“They have ruined a beautiful and historic fountain.

“They look like something from a third rate waxwork theme park. Just awful.”

The original statue was built in the 1860s. It was part of the parks design created by Edward Milner and featured a sea serpent like water feature with spring water and metal cups attached by chains.

It is known locally as the “Dolphin Fountain”. However the actual water feature was a sea serpent.

A spokesperson for Preston City Council said in response to the query over the concerns about the fountain heads: “The only refurbishment to the fountain has been a new pump and clean out.

“The heads aren’t new or replacements, they are the same as when the fountain was installed when Miller Park was being built in the 1860s and are original features. They have just had a clean.

“The figures represent Earth, Wind, Water and Fire and the colour of the structure was made to look like it is water weathered.”

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