Frederick Forrester and the 1933 Unveiling
The White Rabbit statue at West Shore, Llandudno was the work of Frederick Forrester, a local stonemason. It was completed in 1933, sixty-eight years after Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was first published, and commissioned as a formal commemoration of Llandudno's connection to Alice Liddell. The choice of the White Rabbit — the character who sets the story in motion by running past Alice with his watch — as the subject of the statue was natural: the White Rabbit is the first character the reader meets, the impulse that drives Alice underground, and one of the most immediately recognisable figures from the book.
The unveiling ceremony on West Shore in 1933 was given considerable significance by the presence of David Lloyd George, the former Prime Minister, as the person who drew back the covering. Lloyd George was a North Welshman — born in Manchester but raised in Llanystumdwy in Caernarfonshire — with deep roots in the region and a long political association with Wales. He had represented Caernarfon Boroughs as an MP from 1890 until shortly before the unveiling. His presence at the ceremony was a statement about Llandudno's standing as a resort of national significance, and about the seriousness with which the town took its Alice connection.
Alice Liddell's Letter
Alice Liddell herself was invited to attend the unveiling. By 1933 she was eighty-one years old and living in Hampshire, and the journey to Llandudno was beyond what her health allowed. She sent a letter instead, which was read at the ceremony. In it she wrote:
"I still have the happiest memories of Penmorfa, as my father's house at Llandudno was called then, and of the rambles over the Great Orme's Head and among the Llandudno sand hills. I wish I could come personally in gratitude for those joyous days, and for the days spent with Mr Dodgson."
The letter is the most direct record of Alice's feelings about Llandudno. The warmth is clear, the detail specific: she names the Great Orme, the sand hills, and Penmorfa's old name. She also names Carroll ("Mr Dodgson") in the same breath as Llandudno, which historians have found significant, though not conclusive as proof that Carroll actually visited West Shore. The full text of the letter — beyond this well-known passage — and the complete local newspaper coverage of the 1933 ceremony are among the items of historical record that would benefit from archival research.
The Disputed Plaque Inscription
The plaque on the White Rabbit statue reads: "On this very shore, during happy rambles with Alice Liddell, LEWIS CARROLL was inspired to write the literary treasure Alice in Wonderland."
This inscription has been a source of historical debate. Lewis Carroll's own diary records the 4 July 1862 Oxford boat trip on the River Isis as the occasion on which he first told Alice the story. That is the documented origin of the book. The plaque's claim that Carroll was "inspired to write" the book on the West Shore of Llandudno goes beyond what the surviving evidence establishes, and conflates the question of whether Carroll visited (which is uncertain) with the question of where inspiration occurred (which is documented as Oxford).
The plaque has been in place since 1933 and is unlikely to be changed. But visitors who know the history can read it with appropriate scepticism. Llandudno's genuine claim — that Alice Liddell spent eleven summers here, that she loved the place, that the Liddell family's connection to the town is well-documented — is strong enough without requiring the inscription's stronger claim about Carroll.
Vandalism and the Steel Cage
The White Rabbit statue has had a turbulent physical history. Over the decades following its 1933 unveiling it was vandalised repeatedly. The rabbit's ears — the most projecting and therefore most vulnerable part of the sculpture — were broken off at various points. The paws suffered similar damage. The cumulative effect of repeated vandalism was that the statue became steadily more damaged and harder to present as the dignified memorial it was intended to be.
At some point, the decision was made to erect a steel cage around the statue. The cage protected the remaining stonework from further physical attack, but the effect was aesthetically unfortunate: a figure from a children's story, one associated with whimsy and wonder, surrounded by industrial metalwork as if it were a threat rather than an artwork. The cage era represents a low point in the statue's history — a solution to vandalism that compromised the very thing it was protecting.
The 2012 Restoration and the 2015 Move
In 2012, sculptor Nick Elphick undertook a significant restoration of the White Rabbit statue. The work addressed the damage accumulated over decades and restored the statue to something closer to its original form. Elphick's restoration gave the White Rabbit back its coherence as a piece of sculpture, allowing it to serve again as the public focal point it was always intended to be.
In 2015, the statue was moved from its original location by the model boating lake to its current site at West Shore. The move was motivated in part by the desire to give the statue a more prominent and accessible position, and in part by practical considerations about security and visibility. The current location offers better sight-lines, is more easily found by visitors who come to West Shore specifically for the Alice connection, and sits close to the general area where Penmorfa once stood.
The statue is now one of the most photographed objects in Llandudno. It forms the natural centrepiece of the Alice Trail around the town and is the first specific destination that visitors interested in the Alice story seek out at West Shore.
The Wooden Statues: A Wider Context
The White Rabbit statue is the oldest and most historically significant of the Alice-related public sculptures in Llandudno, but it sits alongside a more recent set of wooden carved character statues that form part of the Finding Alice trail. These larger-than-life wooden figures appear at various points around the town: Alice herself outside the railway station, the Queen of Hearts near the promenade, the Hatter gazing up at the Great Orme, the Cheshire Cat at West Shore near the former site of Penmorfa, and Tweedledee and Tweedledum in Haulfre Gardens.
The wooden statues are not as historically grounded as the 1933 marble White Rabbit, but they serve a different purpose: they are navigational waypoints for the Finding Alice trail, they give the Alice story a physical presence throughout the town rather than concentrating it at West Shore, and they are the kind of exuberant public art that works particularly well with children. Taken together with the White Rabbit, they make Llandudno's Alice presence in public space considerable.
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