Grey’s Monument
A Moment with Earl Grey
Grey’s Monument sits at the junction of Grey, Grainger and Blackett Streets in Newcastle upon Tyne. This tribute was erected in honor of Charles Earl Grey, a Newcastle native who served as the Prime Minister of the UK from 1830 to 1834.
Curls of hair, prominent eyebrows, sharp nose. Charles Earl Grey resembles Michael Caine in tights and puffy shorts dangling with tassels, something that could be a cape or the living room drapes wrapped around him like fur.
Earl, as his friends called him, looking down on the city of his birth from a 133 feet tall Roman Doric column.
A ruler, a Whig, equivalent to today’s concept of liberal. Grey secured the Reform Act of 1832, opening up voting rights for commoners.
Feats like this earned Earl Grey this, Grey’s monument, his likeness immortalized in marble, standing on tip of a phallic deus ex machina edifice stuck in the middle of an intersection like a lightning bolt.
I know Earl Grey as the drink I prefer to coffee, a blend of tea made of blackened blossoms of the Camellia sinensis shrubs, native to China, mixed with oil of Bergamot, an Italian citrus fruit.
Earl Grey’s connection with this tea is not clear. Some say Earl saved a Chinese man from drowning and the recipe was his reward…
