'Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain' is a sculpture in Community Square outside the Storey’s Field Centre at Eddington, near Cambridge.

The sculpture is made up of seven free-standing discs which are brightly lit with LEDs; at any one time each of the seven discs will correspond to one of the seven colours of the colour spectrum.

As well as providing a focal point for the public space, each of these discs is also a rudimentary clock. At any one point a disc will show a single colour, but over the course of an hour it will slowly move through the entire spectrum – red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet – returning to its starting colour on the hour.

Each ‘clock’ has a different starting colour – red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo or violet – so no two discs are ever the same colour at the same time, but they will be in a state of constant but barely perceptible change, like the minute hand of a clock.

'Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain' is inspired by Cambridge scholar Sir Isaac Newton’s colour circle. In 1704, in his pioneering work on optics, Newton divided the visible light spectrum into a circle of seven distinct colours: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. This colour order is often memorised by the common mnemonic ‘Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain’, providing the name of the piece.

The artwork is the fourth permanent public artwork at Eddington in North West Cambridge. It was commissioned by the University of Cambridge’s North West Cambridge Development through the public art programme managed by the Contemporary Art Society.

https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/34150