Hagley Obelisk

The Hagley Obelisk (also known as the Wychbury Obelisk and locally as Wychbury Monument) in Hagley Park stands close to the summit of Wychbury Hill in Hagley, Worcestershire, and is only about 150 metres from the border of the West Midlands.

The obelisk is a Grade II* listed building. It is 84 feet (26 m) high, and can be seen for many miles around, as far as Shropshire, and the hill if not the monument on its summit from the Malverns.

The obelisk was commissioned by Sir Richard Lyttelton, a son of the elderly Sir Thomas Lyttelton, the owner of the nearby Hagley Hall. Hagley Hall has been the home of successive Viscounts Cobham and Wychbury Hill is part of the property, but is accessible from public footpaths.

Building of the obelisk started in 1747, and it was constructed at the same time as George, the eldest son and heir of Sir Thomas (and the future 1st Lord Lyttelton), started to refashion Hagley Hall park in the fashionable Picturesque style. The refashioning included building a ruined castle, the Clent Hill four stones and temples styled in Greek and Roman architecture.

Since at least the 1970s the obelisk has been sporadically defaced with graffiti asking "Who put Bella in the Wych Elm?", a reference to an unsolved World War II-era mystery in which the decomposed body of a woman was found in a nearby wood. The graffiti was last updated in 1999.

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