This is Molly: unveiled on the banks of the Wear earlier this year, the statue commemorates the women who kept Sunderland’s shipyards running during the World Wars. She was sculpted by Ron Lawson.

Shipbuilding was a continuous occupation on Wearside for about seven centuries, until the last shipyard closed in 1988. It perhaps lends an extra air of poignancy to the statue to realise that it’s commemorating an important contribution to an industry that no longer exists, and shows a woman at work in an occupation that’s now lost to Wearside history.

The same artist is responsible for this nearby sculpture showing two shipbuilders eating their lunch towards amid a dying industry, perhaps contemplating their employment fate: