John Christie Wright Memorial Fountain

Early in 1960, Jean Hague-Smith offered to pay for and donate a fountain in memory of JC Wright to the City of Sydney. Sydney sculptor Gerald Lewers, who had just won a prize in the City Fountains Competition, was commissioned to produce the work.

• An inscription on the left plaque mounted on a stone wall abutting the fountain reads:
  
  
  In memory of John Christie Wright, sculptor, Born Aberdeen Scotland Killed Bullecourt, France, May 3rd 1917, Lieutenant, 20th Battalion A.I.F. Aged 28 years.
• An inscription on the right plaque mounted on a stone wall abutting the fountain reads:
  
  
  These laid the world away: gave up the years to be
  Of work and joy and the unhoped serene,
  that men call age; and those who would have been
  Their sons, they Gave their immortality.
  
  Rupert Brooke
• An inscription on the back wall reads:
  
  
  Sculptor: The late Gerald Lewers

Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead!
There’s none of these so lonely and poor of old,
But, dying, has made us rarer gifts than gold.
These laid the world away; poured out the red
Sweet wine of youth; gave up the years to be
Of work and joy, and that unhoped serene,
That men call age; and those who would have been.
Their sons, they gave, their immortality.

Blow, bugles, blow! They brought us, for our dearth.
Holiness, lacked so long, and Love, and Pain.
Honour has come back, as a king, to earth,
And paid his subjects with a royal wage;
And Nobleness walks in our ways again;
And we have come into our heritage.

– Rupert Brooke, The Dead (III), 1916

Between the 1970s and 1990s the fountain was relocated several times in Macquarie Park Place, which destroyed its original naturalistic setting.

In 2012, major restoration works were completed. The City of Sydney and landscape architects Terragram worked closely with the family of Gerald Lewers to redesign the fountain setting and establish a better location in the park.

The fountain was moved to an intimate area of the park and sits in a garden bed surrounded by low level plants and river stones. The Lewers family requested the stones surrounding the fountain to be sourced from the Nepean River to reflect its original setting in 1960.

Surrounding works included landscaping, new sandstone seats and new paving. The conservation team included specialist metalworkers Wardrope and Carroll, landscape contractors Wilson Pedersen and terrazzo specialists Pebblecrete.