Almost 500 years ago, a wealthy and well-connected judge named Sir James Hales walked into the River Stour near Canterbury in order to take his own life. Hales had risen to favour under King Henry VIII but had refused to convert to Catholicism under the repressive regime of his daughter Mary, and had been imprisoned in the Tower of London.
Struggling with his mental health after his release in 1554, he drowned himself. But as suicide was a crime at the time, his widow was denied the right to inherit his property and so took the matter to law, in a case that became so famous in the 16th century that it inspired Shakespeare’s portrayal of the suicide by drowning of Hamlet’s Ophelia.
Next week, that Tudor tragedy will be commemorated with the formal unveiling of a sculpture that has been installed under the waters of the Stour in Canterbury, close to where Hales took his life 470 years ago, inspired by his story and that of Shakespeare’s tragic heroine.
The artwork, called Ophelia, is by the British sculptor Jason deCaires Taylor, who created the world’s first underwater sculpture park near Grenada. Taylor, whose sculptures have been installed on reefs and seabeds around the world, is originally from Canterbury and grew up splashing in the Stour close to his home.
After another of his installations in the river became damaged and required repair, Taylor became aware of the connection between the Stour, Hales and Shakespeare after reading a blogpost about the case by Amy Licence, a historian who lives locally.
“The whole story of Ophelia holding on to the willow branches and falling in … I remember as kids holding on to the branches, we used to swing from one side to the other,” Taylor said. “So it was really fascinating to hear the story has that background.”
His recycled glass sculpture, a figure of a woman lying on her back while her flower-strewn dress floats around her, also deliberately evokes Sir John Everett Millais’s famous painting. It has been installed just beneath the water’s surface next to the city’s medieval Westgate, and is illuminated from within.
Taylor, who said environmental concerns were “the number one reason I became an artist”, has installed sensors measuring the river’s temperature and transparency, which he hopes will build into a dataset to be shared with local scientists. He is also exploring technology that would allow the sculpture to monitor pollution and nitrate levels.
“I hope that people ask more questions, that they will be intrigued and fascinated and want to learn more about the history of the river and Canterbury,” he said.
Licence said it was “so important” to keep alive stories such as Hales’. Given the judge killed himself while suffering from religious persecution, she said that “remembering Canterbury as a city of religious diversity is really important in this day and age. We have so many little stories like this with resonance for today, I think they need to be captured and remembered.”
Stewart Ross, the chair of the Canterbury commemoration society, which commissioned the work, said: “Canterbury has many works of art and is famous as a heritage centre, but it doesn’t have a lot of new work. This is so powerful because it is brand-new, brilliant modern art in a medieval setting. That is very, very powerful and moving.”
• This article was amended on 16 September 2024 to correct the spelling of Amy Licence’s surname.
