More Mercers' Maidens

The Maidens that mark the properties of the Mercer's Company come in quite a variety of shapes and styles.
In Mercer Street, Covent Garden there are a few, as one might expect, including this one above the doorway to Maidstone House, one of a number of artisans' dwellings built by the Mercers in 1905. She is very Edwardian Baroque, the style Osbert Lancaster called Wrenaissance.

The Mercers also own Barnard's Inn, a former base for lawyers of which the tiny 15th century hall survives, hemmed about by the backs of office blocks. For years it was the Mercers' School until it closed in 1959. It is now a public hall for Gresham College.
The school was rebuilt by Thomas Chatfeild Clarke in 1893 and the whole complex was reconstructed again in 1988 by Green Lloyd Architects in the post-modernist style. They added a thoroughly post-modern maiden in bronze over one of the arches that provide a public passage through the buildings.
The entrance to the Inn is through an arch in Halton House, Holborn, also by Chatfeild Clarke but later (1907).
A Mercers' Maiden looks out over the entrance and another in an aedicule right up at top. This one is a bit cheeky, with flowing locks and an alluring hint of shoulder.

Prudential Assurance, Holborn Bars WC1

Prudential Assurance built their headquarters at Holborn Bars in installments from 1876 to 1901, to designs by Alfred Waterhouse that set a house style that was used for mini-Prus up and down the country.
Over the entrance is a figure of a solemn girl with a mirror. I thought what a lark it would be if she was the original Prudence. So I looked her up and indeed, she is Prudence herself, one of the Cardinal Virtues embodied in terracotta.
The statue was designed in 1893 by Frederick W. Pomeroy RA, the man who created the figure of Justice on the Old Bailey. It was made by Burmantofts of Leeds.
Prudence is pictured with her mirror of self-knowledge in one hand and what looks like a pen or stylus in the other.
Waterhouse himself also created a figure of Prudence which is rather alarming - she not only has the mirror but brandishes a snake, another symbol of wisdom. And she has eyes in the back of her head, in a wierd re-jigging of the classical convention which showed her with faces looking in both directions.
Gordon Brown famously worships Prudence. I wonder if he comes round at dawn and sacrifices a few chickens every time his ratings plummet?