HOPES are high that the new year will bring official recognition of the Tyneside link with one of the most famous symbols in the world.

The Spirit of Ecstasy Rolls Royce figurine was designed by Charles Robinson Sykes, who grew up in Westgate Road in Newcastle.

It is the 100th anniversary of the adoption of the world’s most distinctive car mascot and North East art historian Marshall Hall is calling on Newcastle City Council to erect a commemorative plaque on Sykes’s home at 232 Westgate Road.

It could tie in with the release of a Lord Attenborough film, currently under development, called The Silver Ghost, set to star Christian Bale.

Charles Sykes’s model for the Rolls Royce figurine was Eleanor Thornton, the secretary and mistress of Tory MP and motoring enthusiast Lord Montagu of Beaulieu.

She died along with 342 others when the liner SS Persia, bound for India, was torpedoed in 1915 off Crete by a German submarine. Lord Montagu survived the sinking.

Lord Montagu published the Car illustrated magazine, and he commissioned Charles Sykes to design covers for the publication, which led to the Rolls Royce figurine project.

"It is not only the most famous car mascot in the world but also the most famous miniature sculpture," said Mr Hall, who lives in Riding Mill, Northumberland, and is author of the definitive Artists of Northumbria book.

"If anybody is worthy of a commemorative plaque, it is the designer of an object which is recognised worldwide."

Charles Sykes was born in 1875 in Brotton, near Saltburn on Teesside.

In 1878 his family moved to Newcastle where his father Samuel and uncle Charles set up a decorating and wallpaper-making business in Westgate Road.

Samuel sent Charles to the nearby Rutherford College of Art.

Charles won a scholarship to the Royal College of Art and came into contact with Lord Montagu after completing a painting for a Cistercian abbey of which the MP was a lay abbot.

He went on to paint Lord Montagu and his Silver Ghost Rolls Royce, and also produce silver and gold cups for Royal Ascot and posters for the London and North East Railway. He died in 1950.

The Spirit of Ecstasy name emerged in a letter from Rolls Royce in which the company said it had sought a mascot which would convey "the spirit of Rolls Royce – namely speed with silence, absence of vibration, the mysterious harnessing of great energy, a beautiful living organism of superb grace.

"Such is the combination of virtues which Mr Charles Sykes has expressed so admirably in the graceful little lady who is designed as a figurehead for the Rolls Royce."

The letter goes on to say that when Charles Sykes designed the graceful little goddess, he had in mind "the spirit of ecstasy, who has selected road travel as her supreme delight and alighted on the prow of a Rolls Royce car to revel in the freshness of the air, and the musical sound of her fluttering draperies."

A council spokesman said that its aim was to have a diverse range of plaques in the city and the proposal would be considered.