Victory Over Blindness Statue Piccadilly Station

Images of Britain: Victory Over Blindness, Piccadilly Station, Manchester

Victory Over Blindness is a bronze statue outside the main entrance to Piccadilly Station in Manchester. The evocative work by Johanna Domke-Guyot shows seven blind soldiers from World War I with their hands on the soldier in front guiding each other from the battlefield. They are led by one soldier on crutches who appears to have lost one eye.

The sculpture was unveiled in 2018 by The Countess of Wessex and commemorates the centenary of the end of the First World War in 1918. The Blind Veterans UK commissioned the piece which is based on an actual photograph from the time (shown below). The charity, which was set up in 1915 to help and rehabilitate soldiers blinded in the conflict, believes it is the only memorial in Britain to show disabled war veterans.

Two plaques, one in braille, accompany the statue.