On June 19, 1863, in Salisbury Guildhall Square, as the bands crashed out the strains of “God Save the Queen,” 6000 people watched a peer of the realm uncover a statue of Lord Herbert of Lea – the man whose efforts with Florence Nightingale to reform medical services in the Crimean War were said to have “halved the death rate of the British Army.”

The statue was the work of a one-time world-famous Italian sculptor named Baron Marochetti and a report stated how it was an excellent likeness.

The figure, in bronze, stood eight-and-a-half feet high on a pedestal of polished Cornish granite ten-and-a-half feet in height – it was apparently erected by Mr R Futcher of the Fisherton Works.

The statue was officially unveiled by the British politician and Governor General of India, Earl De Grey and Ripon two years after the death of the famous Sidney Herbert who lived at Wilton and was Secretary of State for War from 1852-55.

De Grey performed the uncovering ceremony in the absence of the then Premier, Lord Palmerston, who was unable to attend through an attack of gout.

It is recorded that De Grey went on to say how Sidney Herbert, with the aid of others “gave the British Army a new organisation of its medical department, good sanitary arrangements, improved barracks, better ventilation and greater comforts.

November 1952 saw the statue of Lord Herbert transferred from its original site before Salisbury Guildhall to a position in Victoria Park where it remains to this day.

A question which has puzzled many over the years is what is the plan or map which Sidney Herbert holds in his right hand?

It is in fact a paper on which is engraved a plan of the Herbert Memorial Hospital, Bournemouth which was built in his memory.