Willy Collins: Future of £200,000 memorial in Sheffield cemetery for 'King of Sheffield' still unknown

The spectacular memorial was unveiled in Shiregreen Cemetery last March as a lasting tribute to Willy Collins, a 49-year-old who died while on a family holiday in Majorca in July 2020.

To mark his final resting place his family installed a 35-ton monument carved out of Italian marble at his grave.

It features two life-sized statues of the bare-knuckle boxer’s six-foot-two frame, four flagpoles, depictions of Jesus and biblical scenes. It also has a solar-powered jukebox playing Willy’s favourite tracks.

The monument is lit up in LED lights that change colour and is under 24-hour CCTV monitoring. A security firm also guards the memorial.

It has divided opinion since it was unveiled due to its sheer size.

Willy’s family claims permission was granted by Sheffield Council but in response the council claims that the pre-agreed dimensions for the memorial have been breached.

Responding to a request for clarification on the situation under the Freedom of Information Act, the council said it initially gave the go-ahead for the monument on the understanding it would be under 4ft 6ins in height.

It claims there were additions to the original memorial installed afterwards by a different, unnamed mason to the one who originally dealt with the application to erect the tribute.

The council said: “Having spoken to the memorial mason regarding the construction they only erected what they had been given a permit to do. They took photographs of the completed work, they freely admitted that they supplied to an unnamed memorial mason the rest of the items on the grave that do not have SCC approval but did not fit them.”

The last statement the council issued on the situation was that it was “still trying to achieve an agreed position with the Collins family over the future of the memorial”.

Willy was known among family and friends as ‘the King of Sheffield’. He was the patriarch of a traveller family, one of 16 siblings and a dad-of-nine, who was also a grandfather.

His family has warned there will be “war” if the monument is damaged.