The cone that sits atop the Duke of Wellington statue at Royal Exchange Square in Glasgow has become an emblem of the city - but how did it first get there?
Arthur Wellesley, the 1st Duke of Wellington, served twice as Prime Minister and was among the commanders who helped the Napoleonic Wars. His achievements, in Glasgow at least, have been overshadowed by a traffic cone.
As most great decisions are made, the first time the Duke donned his orange hat was reportedly the result of a beer-hazed night out in the early 80s. The people behind the origins are unclear, but they were unlikely to know it would become a tourist attraction.
Due to the height of the statue, Glasgow City Council had to employ a cherry picker just to take it down, but, each time they did, the cone was back within the swish of a horse's tail.
By the late 1990s, to catch the famous equestrian statue bareheaded was a rarity. Maintenance workers found themselves in a never-ending game of cat and mouse.
As the years went on, the Duke and his cone were plastered on postcards, t-shirts, campaigns, and traffic cone-shaped hats available for purchase. Locals and tourists were in love.
Glasgow City Council, however, were not. By 2013 they had reached their limit and announced plans to raise the size of the plinth in an attempt to prevent vandalism.
Within 24 hours, ‘Keep the Cone’ had launched a Facebook page and gained over 72,000 members. Glaswegians felt that the cone didn’t represent vandalism, but the city’s sense of humour and local culture.
Glasgow refused to take historic icons, authority figures, or themselves too seriously. What they were taking seriously, was their campaign to keep the cone.
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Raymond Hackland and Steven Allan were behind the protest, even designing a line of Keep the Cone t-shirts and donating funds to Scottish charities. A Change.org protest was organised by Donna Yates and Gavin Doig, with 10,613 signatures in less than 2014.
While it may be easy to think that those against the plans to raise the plinth were purely looking to keep the cone for comedic reasons, Hackland also believed the proposal was a ‘waste of taxpayer money’. Not only did protestors feel the cone had become part of the city’s heritage, but the Change.org petition asked: “Does anyone really think that a raised plinth will deter drunk Glaswegians?”
On the other side of the argument, officials were concerned about damage to the historic monument. The spurs and half of the sword on the statue were already missing.
Gary Nisbet, an art historian and critic of the coning said: “I have been told by one city councillor that the city council was worried sick that someone would be injured if they fell off the statue.”
A business case report which accompanied the application for raising the plinth reads: “This depressing image of Glasgow has sadly featured in posters and postcards depicting the city. Ironically this unfortunate impression of the city has been supported by former Lord Provosts and Chief Executives and even adopted occasionally by the City Marketing Bureau.”
Those behind Keep the Cone felt the opposing arguments were hypocritical, and officials seemed to: “Embrace the Duke of Wellington’s cone when it came to tourism purposes, but rejected the tradition itself.”
The campaign was successful and within one day Glasgow City Council leader Gordon Matheson told officers to withdraw the plans. A protest that was planned for the same evening turned into a street party, with banners that read: “We Came, We Saw, We Cone-quered.”
To this day, Keep the Cone Facebook Page is still posting - with those who run it keeping the page alive incase of another ‘act of madness’. Paul Kane, a public relations officer for the Glasgow City Council told Mental Floss in 2017: “We don’t have much to add on the subject, on which so many people have strongly-held and conflicting views.”
In 2011, the Lonely Planet guide named the statue on a top 10 of the most bizarre monuments on Earth - alongside the Rocky Balboa statue in Serbia and the Washington National Cathedral.
Since then the cone has been modified to mark Glasgow Pride, and a replica featured in the opening of the 2014 Commonwealth Games, and, most recently, the traffic cone has appeared in blue and yellow to show support for Ukraine.
