[1][2] The location of the statue in the market place in St Ives had been proposed by the historian Thomas Carlyle in an 1849 letter.

Holland that:[4] "My private suspicion I confess is that the present generation of Englishmen—who have filled their towns with such a set of "public statues" as were never before erected by any people, ugly brazen images (to mere commonplace adventurers with titles on them, and even sometimes to mere paltry scoundrels, worthy of immediate oblivion only)...are not likely to do themselves or anybody much good by setting up statues to Oliver Cromwell.

I think it will be very difficult to avoid the introduction of such an ocean of flummery and mere idle balderdash into the affair (if the public are fairly awoken to it) as will be very distressing to any one who feels how a Cromwell ought to be honoured by the nation that produced him.

"In 1899 the nearby town of Huntingdon abandoned their plan to erect a statue to Cromwell, and the opportunity was seized by St Ives.

F. W. Pomeroy was commissioned as the sculptor, and the statue was exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts in London to good reviews.