a disastrous clean-up by the city council ruined Worcester's famous Elgar statue.

And now experts from London have had to be called in to the city to return the statue to its former glory.

Sculptor Kenneth Potts, who created the bronze statue, first spotted that something was wrong following the council's annual clean-up operation in November last year.

He informed the authority and this week the council forked out £1,000 for a team of London experts to restore the great composer to his former glory.

Mr Potts told the Worcester News of his shock when he went to look at his creation and realised its patent surface had been stripped away.

"I was very disappointed with the consequence of the cleaning process - it had actually stripped away the original surface," he said.

"As soon as it was cleaned I went to have a look and was very unhappy at the way it looked.

"Maybe it was an accident."

Paul Murphy, from the Artisan Sculpture Foundry in London, who carried out the restoration work said: "When I came to look at it, it looked bad, to be honest. It was actually a pale light brown colour.

"I had to strip all the wax off it, burn it off, reapply new chemicals and give it a brand new coating to restore it back to how it was because it didn't look good.

"It looks a lot better now, it's antique brown and real high quality. It took a whole day for us to do the work on it."

Richard Ansell, city council maintenance manager said: "We cleaned it up late last year and the sculptor was unhappy with it, so it has been re-patented. If there was a misunderstanding, it has been resolved.

"With things like this we do learn as we go along and there are different schools of thought on how to maintain monuments like this.

"I'd like to know what the people of Worcester think of it now."

He also said the sculptor was writing to the council with recommendations on how to look after it in the future.

"You could say we have bowed to his superior knowledge," said Mr Ansell.

The Elgar statue, which stands opposite the Cathedral at the end of the High Street, was unveiled in 1981 by the Prince of Wales.

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