QUESTIONS were being asked today about a controversial Hampshire park sculpture which cost £70,000 of public lottery money.

The artwork, called Enclosure, was unveiled by Southampton City Council as part of its £4.5 million National Lottery-funded overhaul of the city's five central parks.

But the four-sided, four-metre-high sculpture by London-based artist Paul de Monchaux has come under fire from critics who believe it is a waste of £70,000 from the Lottery Heritage Fund.

John Lee, chairman of Gosport and Fareham Inshore Rescue Service, which has been turned down for a lottery grant to extend its Gosport boathouse three times, could not believe it.

He said: "When people bought their lottery tickets they assumed the money was going to good causes to help the community. In my definition of good causes, that does not mean weird sculptures. Clearly, whoever bid for this money managed to convince the lottery board that a strange, peculiar sculpture was more important than saving lives at sea."

But Mike Spickett, manager for the City Council's parks restoration project, said the sculpture in Watts Park was the culmination of a hugely successful renovation scheme.

"The whole aim is that you look through it and from each side it frames a different feature of Southampton - it frames St Peter's Church in Commercial Road, the clock tower in the civic centre, and it frames the statue of Watts and the cenotaph. All those landmarks were built at different times, so although people are saying 'What are you doing putting that in a Victorian park?', nothing is static.

He added: "Opinion seems to be split about 50-50 - people are either very enthusiastic or quite negative, which is the nature of art. To me it's a 110 per cent success because people are talking about it."

Canadian-born artist Paul de Monchaux was commissioned to create the sculpture by the parks restoration project team, which was formed by council officers and professional design consultants.

Mr de Monchaux, who studied at the Slade School of Fine Art in London in 1954, said: "I think these things take a while to settle down and people need to first of all look at it carefully and perhaps get accustomed to the piece and then make a judgement."

A National Lottery spokesman said: "As the Heritage Lottery Fund all of our funding can only be spent on things like restoring urban parks or museums or historic buildings, so the money could not have been spent on hospitals or general charities.

"The Southampton central parks project is one of the best inner city park restoration projects that we have been involved with and we have been delighted with its progress."