On most mornings, I walk down Richmond’s Duke Street as I go to the gym. Apart from one house, its mishmash of otherwise nondescript buildings don’t merit a second look. The exception is Number 4 which was built in 1999 and which I love. It is a skinny building that is supported by four magnificent oak pillars that run up each side of the building from the pavement to the roof. Often I just stop to touch the pillars as I go by!

But more impressive than the pillars is the giant copper ‘Number 4’ sculpture that fits neatly in front of the triangle of the roof’s gable end (see the first illustration). I just love staring up to enjoy its shape, its size, its proportions, its elegance and its siting. However, being in a narrow street, this roof-top sculpture which is slightly set back usually goes unnoticed. Indeed, it is only fully visible from the other side of the street. Interestingly, when I have stopped fellow pedestrians to point out my beloved statue, seeing it comes as a complete revelation to them.

For years I have wondered what the architects might have had in mind when they built their rarely-to-be-seen gigantic ‘Number 4’. I know that sometimes characters, like the ABL 8807 and ABL8833 on top of our local 490 bus, are printed large not for the public gaze but to enable the vehicles to be identified from the air in cases of emergency. Surely this can’t apply to ‘Number 4’! Then there those who add disproportionately sized characters almost as a tease. Why, for instance, did Leonardo da Vinci paint the microscopic initials LV in the right pupil of his Mona Lisa? May be the overlarge ‘Number 4’ is there primarily to present observers with a conundrum. My third and rather fanciful thought has been that the architects had quasi spiritual thoughts akin to those of the Peruvians who, around 2000 years ago, marked out in the ground the giant Nazca images of  monkeys or people that only make sense when viewed from high in the sky. 

My search for an explanation finally ended last week when, based on new information, I decided that the ‘Number 4’ was built and mounted almost certainly to cock a snook at the local Council! But a word about this ‘cocking’ practice. It is not easy to know what to do if you have been challenged by those in authority. Inevitably there will be feelings of upset, even anger, but what next? In some circumstances, as with family or colleagues, resolution might come through talking. With employers or committees, such resolution might demand a lengthy correspondence and a formal hearing. 

No matter what formal alternative is used, some turn to a very old response in which the ‘victim’  ‘cocks a snook’ at the perpetrator. These days it is rare to enact the actual physical gesture which entails putting the thumb on the nose and waggling the fingers at the offending party (see second illustration). More often the gesture is enacted metaphorically with some show of disdain for the perpetrator in order to register defiance, to expose the injustice or to publicly challenge and undermine the perpetrator’s position. It is just this that seems to have happened with the ‘4’.

Records show that when granting planning permission to build the house at Number 4, Richmond Council asked that the house’s street number be displayed on the building’s frontage. Moreover, if the owner failed to comply they could be fined up to £500. 

This is a most unusual request for a council to make, and the architects of such an outstanding modern building could well have seen this requirement as an unwarranted and insulting intervention. In response, rather than put the house number by the front door for visitors and deliveries as was presumably the point of the original request, the architect installed the giant ‘Number 4’ statue on the roof. Clearly they complied with the Council’s request for a number to be placed on the frontage, albeit that the number finally displayed was always going to be difficult to read at street level by visitors at the house’s front door. Here then was the perfect snook.

I find the ‘Number 4’ sculpture as beautiful as ever, and knowing its possible ‘snook’ history makes it that much more beguiling. I imagine that having the giant ‘4’ on display to the public still haunts the local council.

The first illustration is a photo of the 1.5m copper ‘Number 4’ statue on the gable end of the roof of Number 4, Duke Street, Richmond. The second illustration shows a classical, two-handed snook being cocked. For the photo, the fingers were held still; when used in anger they would normally be waggled! 

For helping write this blog I would like you to thank Alan, Richard, Adrian, Rohan and Vivien.