Look at this fellow, defiant in the snow. In this photograph the dinosaur is standing in Peartree Bridge, where it has become a local landmark since its creation in 1979. We don’t know the date of this snowy scene, but the quality of image leads me to hazard a guess at sometime in the 1990s. The photograph comes from the collection of the Milton Keynes Development Corporation – there is a chance that it would have been used in their publicity materials.
This Triceratops is a younger sibling of sorts to the more famous Concrete Cows, creation of artist Liz Leyh. Leyh was employed by Milton Keynes District Council as a Resident Artist, tasked with leading community arts projects that would create landmarks for the new town, and help neighbours get to know one another. A participant of her Concrete Cows project was Bill Billings, a truck driver recently moved to Milton Keynes from London. Working with Leyh on the Concrete Cows he would have seen at first hand the technique of sculpting on to wire mesh with concrete.
A year later Billings was working on his own community arts project: this ambitious thirty foot long Triceratops. If I didn’t know that it was a herbivore, I would say that it could eat a herd of concrete cows. Made by its community, it is still very much owned by Peartree locals. A Google images search reveals a dazzling array of different paint jobs that have decorated the dinosaur: shiny gold, Spiderman, black and white with skeleton ribs: all reflective of a momentary mood or trend.
The Triceratop’s current décor was selected by the Milton Keynes Park Trust, who manage it and Peartree Bridge.
And Bill Billings? He lived for the rest of his life in Milton Keynes, continuing to create: poetry, sculpture. He also continued to get involved in local projects. He passed away in 2007.
Our ref: D-MKDC 4/23/80
Further Reading:
https://www.miltonkeynes.co.uk/news/people-s-artist-bill-billings-dies-1-865789
Milton Keynes in Fifty Historic Records 