"Have you done the snowman sculpture trail yet?" my brother asked. He does like a good thematic painted fibreglass orienteering gadabout.
The trail's called Walking With The Snowman and is spread across part of the City between Chancery Lane and St Paul's. There are a dozen snowmen altogether, and officially it's The Snowman™ because this is the official much-loved Raymond Briggs walking-in-the-air snowman so trademarks must be applied.
You'll need a map because you're not going to stumble upon some of these by mistake. You could download one (here's a jpg, here's a pdf) but I picked up a proper paper version from the City Information Point opposite St Paul's Cathedral. A paper version's pretty much essential unless you want to spend all your time on your phone swapping between the snowman map and a proper digital map.
You don't have to walk the trail in order, indeed they've made it quite difficult to do so, just try to find your way around and see them all. I found all twelve. Here are the first three.
You're right, they're not very Snowmanny, it's more the snowman being used as a canvas for a differently themed festive sequence. If you look carefully at the designs you can probably work out what that themed festive sequence is. Each snowman has been designed by a different artist, by the way, from locations like Manchester, Birmingham, Norfolk and the Peak District (and not from London). And the sequence is the Twelve Days of Christmas, obviously, those birds being a partridge, turtle doves and French hens.
You might be wondering who's brought these snowmen here, and it's not the City themselves, it's one of London's Business Improvement Districts. They really really want you to come to their part of town, partly in the hope you'll spend some money while you're here but mainly as a promotional placemaking exercise so you learn where it is, what's here and what it's notionally called. I intend to annoy them in today's post by never using the name they've dreamt up, only false names, because this completely negates everything the Ludgate Alliance is trying to do.
Here are the next three.
The first depicts 'calling birds', so you can see the artist was having a bit of a laugh. If you're looking at the one in the middle and wondering why there aren't five gold rings, I should point out that the designs continue on the back of the snowman. That's good because it means I'm not completely spoilering the entire trail by showing you a dozen fronts.
The snowman on the left can be found in New Street Square, an impressively bland plaza with multiple hospitality options, of which the Fetter Quarter team are inordinately proud. As for the snowman on the right, what you can't see in my cropped version is that it's almost entirely surrounded by plastic barriers, manoeuvring lorries and workmen in hi-vis. I spent a lot of the first half of the trail threading past building sites and newbuilds and thinking "this Central Chancery District isn't as appealing as they like to think it is".
Three more.
My favourite is the middle one in the Dutch milkmaid's outfit, because that's an attempt at a coherent artwork rather than simply applying a curvaceous design. It's in Gough Square, and what you can't see is the statue of Dr Johnson's cat Hodge a few feet to one side. My issue with the other two snowmen is that they weren't where the map said they would be - for example 7 swans a swimming was on St Bride Street, not at Ludgate Circus. I see now I should have been going to the spot marked by the red dot, not the place where the snowman was positioned, but it's a bit late to have worked that out now.
The trail covers three historic city of London wards, namely Farringdon Without, Farringdon Within and Castle Baynard. What's odd is seeing a new commercial paradigm overlaid on these traditional boundaries, and administered by giggly marketeers rather than elected aldermen. Do we really need to rebrand the area as Midtown East? It didn't end well last time.
Here's the final trio.
I can't decide whether I like the middle one or whether it feels more like a Help For Heroes graphic. The last one is supposed to represent a gingerbread man and the drummers are all on the back, in case you were wondering. Also one of these three was almost entirely surrounded by office workers standing around smoking and vaping so I've had to crop out a violent puff of berrysmoke, because not everything in Love Citywest is tourist-friendly.
You might be thinking haven't I seen all this before, and you might be right. A similar snowman parade (but with different designs) popped up on the South Bank in 2019 and in Bromley in 2021. They've also appeared in Salford, Middlesbrough, Birmingham, Hitchin, Swadlincote and Whitley Bay, but most Londoners will never have noticed that. Also exactly the same set of 12 snowmen is on display this Christmas around Knole Park in Kent and at Hillsborough Castle in Northern Ireland, so the St Bride's Partnership haven't got anything unique here, they've just bought into a franchise.
You have until 5th January to see the 12 snowmen, should they float your boat. But they're only one part of an overarching campaign called Festive Farringdon Village, whose other highlights included carol singing, gin workshops, wine tasting, wreath making, the switching on of LED illuminations and a Makers' Market. What jolly fun the workers of Fleet Unlimited Now have enjoyed, and they must hope the marketing money stretches to further non-fibreglass attractions in the new year.
