• This ballot has now closed. See the Worcester News next week when we reveal the winners.

NEARLY 800 votes were cast in the first online ballot to pick which famous faces should appear in a new city sculpture.

Voting opened last Tuesday to choose who will star in a portrait bench to be installed near Diglis Bridge celebrating the great and the good of Worcester’s past and present.

Olympic medal winning cyclist Ernest Payne, antiques expert Henry Sandon and Royal Worcester founder Dr John Wall featured in the first ballot and each received several hundred votes in a close-run contest that ended today.

Website readers now have until next Monday to decide whether Manchester Ship Canal designer Sir Edward Leader Williams, British Medical Association founder Sir Charles Hastings or former world-champion downhill mountain biker Tracy Moseley deserve to be immortalised in steel.

The sculpture is the brainchild of sustainable transport charity Sustrans and will commemorate the cycling and walking project that has centered on the new Diglis Bridge.

For anyone not online, voting slips can be found at the Tourist Information Centre in Worcester’s Guildhall and from the reception desk at County Hall until Friday, or from the council’s hub in the Hive from next Monday.

The results will be revealed once both the online and paper voting has ended.

The shortlisted candidates

Ernest Payne
Worcester-born Olympic gold medal winning cyclist hailed the Worcester Wonder. He won gold in the team pursuit at the 1908 summer Olympics in London. He was a member of St John’s Cycling Club and also played amateur football for Manchester United.

Henry Sandon
An antique ceramics expert specialising in Royal Worcester. A former lay clerk of Worcester Cathedral Choir and teacher at the Royal Grammar School. Past curator of Dyson Perrins Museum of Porcelain and TV personality on the BBC’s Antiques Roadshow.

Dr John Wall
Born in Powick in 1708. He was founder of Worcester Royal Infirmary, Royal Worcester porcelain factory and treasurer of the Three Choirs Festival. He also established a village spa at Malvern Wells and was the first to bottle Malvern water.

Sir Edward Leader Williams
He was born and raised in Worcester, living at Diglis House. A designer of the Manchester Ship Canal and knighted for his work. Son to a civil engineer also named Edward who was responsible for works to make the river Severn navigable. Brother Benjamin was a famous landscape artist.

Sir Charles Hastings
Founder of the British Medical Association and instrumental in the development of public health. He lived much of his life in Foregate Street and was knighted by Queen Victoria in 1850 for his outstanding services to the medical profession.

Tracy Moseley
A former downhill mountain bike world champion who was born in Worcester and lives in Storridge. She is one of 27 trained Bikeability instructors working with Worcester-shire County Council to improve the proficiency of cyclists in the county.

Vesta Tilley
A music hall star born in a Worcester back street in 1864. Once one of the best paid women entertainers in the world and better known than Sir Edward Elgar at the peak of her success.

Cecil Duckworth
Established the Worcester Group, which was valued at £72 million when taken over by Bosch in 1992. Backer and chairman of Worcester Warriors Rugby Club. Honoured by the Queen with an OBE in 2004 and founder of the Duckworth Worcestershire Trust charity.

King Charles II and Oliver Cromwell or a Parliamentarian and a Royalist soldier
Worcester was the setting for the first and last conflicts of the English Civil War between the Royalists and the Parliamentarians. Cromwell defeated Charles at the Battle of Worcester on September 3, 1651, ending divine rule.