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Town centrepiece is restored and returned

John Devine
BBC News, Cambridgeshire
Reporting fromMarch
John Devine/BBC Two men stand either side of a 2m (6ft) high cast iron water feature. Both have grey thinning hair and one has a grey beard and moustache, the other is wearing dark glasses, both dressed casually in jeans with jackets and jumpers. They are in a courtyard of a museum with a wooden shed on the left and an old looking building behind then finished in flint like stone.John Devine/BBC
Tom, left, and Peter Jones, were at the ceremony, 62 years after their grandfather bought the fountain at auction for £10

A town's iconic centrepiece has been returned to its spiritual home after a 62-year absence.

The cast-iron drinking feature was installed in the high-domed Coronation Fountain in March, Cambridgeshire, in 1912.

The structure was sold at auction in 1963 to a private individual and it spent years sat in a family's front garden.

But the drinking feature has been restored and is now on display at March and District Museum's courtyard - a short walk from its original home.

"It looks great to see it in its proper beauty," said Peter Jones, 65.

It was his grandfather, Thomas Jones, who bought the feature at auction for £10.

Jones family A man with a pork pie hat and white cardigan over a white shirt and brown tie next to a large drinking fountain that has had various blooms planted in it. The man's wife is on the right, she has dark permed hair and a floral dress on with a necklace around her neck. A greenhouse is visible behind themJones family
Thomas Jones, pictured with his wife Florrie, kept the fountain at their home in Wimblington

The 2m-tall (6ft) fountain was sold in 1963 after it was deemed a road traffic hazard by impinging motorists' vision at the junction in Broad Street.

It sat in the Jones family's front garden in Wimblington until 2014 and then ended up in pieces in an outbuilding in Manea.

Peter Jones, who travelled from Cornwall for an unveiling ceremony at the museum, said his parents did not want the feature returned to Broad Street for "safety reasons".

The family is loaning the fountain to the museum.

March and District Museum The face of the man is not visible as his head is turned towards a section of the water feature. He has a black woolly hat on and a denim jacket and is wearing white protective rubber gloves. He is holding a paint pot and brush and is dabbing on green paint.March and District Museum
Kelvin Adams was one of the volunteer restorers who worked on the water feature and used old photos to replicate the colours
John Devine/BBC Gordon has greyish dark hair swept to the right. He is wearing a black body warmer over a blue and black striped jumper. He is wearing dark framed glasses and the water feature is on the left behind him.John Devine/BBC
Gordon Thorpe said the museum could not display the heavy object inside as it would "crash through the floor"

Gordon Thorpe, chairman of the museum, said it had been a six-year project gaining permission to house the fountain.

"We needed a crane to erect it - it weighs a tonne," he said.

Mr Thorpe said sections of the damaged feature came to the museum in November last year and looked in "a sorry state".

He added that volunteer restorers had worked wonders and spent hours carefully cleaning, welding and repainting the artefact.

March and District Museum is open on Wednesdays and Saturdays 10:30-15:30. Admission is free but donations are welcomed.

March and Distict Museum Black and white photo from 1929 of the iconic March water feature under the domed Coronation structure.March and Distict Museum
The domed Coronation Fountain, seen in 1929, was previously home to the fountain itself

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