A statue of a legendary strongman who carried his pony through a river rather than pay a bridge toll has been unveiled.<\/p>\n
The cast bronze statue of Jimmy Strength is now sitting in Berwick’s high street to the “delight” of tourists and locals.<\/p>\n
The piece was commissioned by the Berwick Rotary Club alongside the Berwick Town Team and Freeman of Berwick. <\/p>\n
Sculptor Sebastien Boyesen said it had been “an absolute joy” to create Jimmy Strength and he had loved getting to know the people of the town.<\/p>\n
He said: “It is made out of cast bronze and it should be good for hundreds of years.<\/p>\n
“I have been a sculptor all my life and sometimes you do work and think I really hope they like it.”<\/p>\n
Jimmy Strength, who stood at just 5ft 2ins tall (1.5m), lived in Berwick in the 19th Century and tales of his strength quickly became myths.<\/p>\n
It was said he came to Berwick Bridge riding a pony and was advised the toll was a halfpenny for pedestrians and one penny for mounted riders, so he paid the halfpenny and carried the pony over the bridge.<\/p>\n
Alongside his remarkable strength, he was also known for being a musician, travelling around the area playing his violin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A statue of a legendary strongman who carried his pony through a river rather than pay a bridge…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":822707,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[449,458,459,64,63,460,134],"class_list":["post-822706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-design","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/822706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=822706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/822706\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/822707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=822706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=822706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=822706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}