Police fear art work could be melted down for scrap
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During the night of Tuesday 10 January and the early hours of Wednesday 11 January, a Lynn Chadwick bronze artwork entitled The Watchers was stolen from the grounds of Roehampton University, Roehampton Lane.
The sculpture, one of a set of three statues, is valued at £600,000. It is over two metres tall and would have taken at least eight people to have moved it. The stolen artwork from Roehampton was one of only three such pieces in the world - the others being in Loughborough and Denmark.
The stolen bronze is the most recent in a series of around twenty similar thefts in and around London within the last six months. Other pieces stolen include the theft of Henry Moore's Reclining Figure in December 2005.
Officers fear that valuable pieces worth millions of pounds could be stolen simply to be melted down and used for scrap metal.
Detective Sergeant Vernon Rapley, the Head of the Metropolitan Police's Arts and Antiques Unit said:,
"The people perpetrating these crimes appear to have no appreciation of, or respect for, the objects they are stealing. Rewards have been offered for the return of some of the objects and we would encourage anyone with information to come forward and assist us to recover these important objects. Anyone who fears for the safety of their objects can seek advice from our crime prevention web pages ( http://www.met.police.uk/crimeprevention/art.htm ), or by contacting their local Crime Prevention officer or The Art and Antiques Unit at New Scotland Yard."
February 9, 2006