King Charles I (left) and his son King Charles II on what is now the south side of the gateway. PICTURE: haluk ermis (licensed under CC BY 2.0)
The equestrian statue of King Charles I at the top of Whitehall is one of London’s most well-known. But less well-known is the statue of the ill-fated King which can be found standing in a niche on the Temple Bar gateway, located at the entrance to Paternoster Square just outside of St Paul’s Cathedral.
Charles is not alone. Part of the gateway’s purpose was as a dynastic statement in support of the Stuarts so the grand portal also features statues of Charles’ father King James I, his mother Queen Anne of Denmark, and his son King Charles II. King James and Queen Anne can be found on the north side of the gateway (originally the east side) and the two Charles’ on the south side (originally the west side).
The design of the gateway, which originally stood at the intersection of Fleet Street and the Strand as a ceremonial entrance into the City of London, is believed to be the work of Sir Christopher Wren who was acting on the orders of King Charles II after the Great Fire of London.
Queen Anne of Denmark and King James I on the north side of the gateway. PICTURE: lizsmith (licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
The statues, which cost a third of the total £1,500 spent on the gateway, are said to have been sculpted by one John Bushnell. They are depicted in Roman attire rather than the dress they would have worn during the period.
They were removed when the gateway was dismantled in 1878 and stored in a yard of Farringdon Road and when the gateway was re-erected at Lady Meux’s Hertfordshire estate at Theobold’s Park, they were placed back in their original locations. And they also accompanied the gateway back to the city when it was positioned its current location in 2004.
This ornate Baroque archway only stands with walking distance from where it originally stood marking the entrance to the City of London. But it came to this position by a somewhat roundabout route.
Temple Bar – with statues of Queen Anne and King James I (looking towards St Paul’s Cathedral) PICTURE: David Adams.
The gate was originally constructed at the junction where Fleet Street becomes the Strand, it marked the boundary between the City of London and Westminster.
While the first gate on the site dates back to the 14th century (prior to that the boundary was apparently marked with a chain two posts), the gate we see today dates from 1672 when, despite having survived the Great Fire of London, the previous gate – a crumbing wooden structure – was demolished and this upmarket replacement built to the design of none other than Sir Christopher Wren (earlier designs for the gate created by Inigo Jones were never acted upon).
An artist’s impression of the Temple Bar in 1870 from Illustrated London News.
Made of Portland stone, the new structure featured figures of King Charles I and King Charles II on the west side and King James I and Queen Anne of Denmark on the east (it’s said that a third of the total £1,500 cost was spent on the statuary alone).
Shortly after its construction, it became a location for the display of the remains of traitors (usually heads), the first of which were the body parts of Rye House plotter Sir Thomas Armstrong and the last of which was the head of Jacobite Francis Towneley in 1746 (there’s also a story that such was the interest when the heads of the Rye House plotters – who had planned to assassinate King Charles II and crown his brother, the future King James II, in his place – were displayed, telescopes were rented out so people could get a closer look).
Temple Bar with statues of King Charles I and King Charles II (looking into Paternoster Square). PICTURE: Eric Heupel (licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Among the luminaries who passed under the central arch were Anne Boleyn (the day before her coronation) and Queen Elizabeth I. The Queen did so most famously on her way to give thanks in St Paul’s Cathedral for the English victory over the Spanish Armada and since then, whenever a Sovereign has wanted to enter the City past Temple Bar, there’s been a short ceremony in which the Sovereign asks permission of the Lord Mayor of London to enter. Granting this, the Mayor then offers the Sword of State as a demonstration of loyalty and this is subsequently carried before the Sovereign as they proceed through the City as a sign of the Lord Mayor’s protection.
The Temple Bar stood in its original location until 1878 when, to help traffic flow, it was carefully removed brick-by-brick over a period of 11 days (the City of London Corporation well aware of its historical significance) . It was initially intended that the gateway would be rebuilt somewhere else in the city, but time passed and no suitable site was found.
Instead, the gate lay in pieces in a yard in Farringdon Road before, in the mid 1880s, Sir Henry Bruce Meux had all 2,500 stones transported via trolleys pulled by horses to his estate at Theobalds Park in Hertfordshire and re-erected there as a gateway (the Lady Meux apparently used the small upper room for entertaining – among those said to have dined here was King Edward VII and Winston Churchill).
Temple Bar at Theobolds Park. PICTURE: Christine Matthews (licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0)
In 1976, the Temple Bar Trust was formed to have the archway returned to London – they eventually succeeded 30 years later in 2004 when it was re-erected on its current site between St Paul’s and Paternoster Square at a cost of some £3 million.
The original site of the Temple Bar is now marked with a Victorian era memorial – erected in 1888 – which features statues of Queen Victoria and Edward, the Prince of Wales.
Walk around the streets of the City of London and it’s hard to miss the myriad of plaques commemorating many buildings lost in the Great Fire of London. On the Strand, however, can be found a plaque which commemorates a building that survived the fire.
Located at 230 Strand (opposite the Royal Courts of Justice), the narrow four storey building, complete with projecting second floor, dates from 1625 and was apparently originally built as the home of the gatekeeper of Temple Bar.
According to the sign upon it, the now Grade II* building was the only structure on the Strand to survive the fire of 1666.
Now a rather plain-looking building, it has been much altered over the years and for much of the 20th century housed the Wig and Pen Club for journalists and lawyers – running from at least 1908, it closed in 2003.
Along with the late 17th century building next door (the two are pictured above with number 230 on the right), it’s now part of a Thai restaurant.
Last Saturday saw the running of the Lord Mayor’s Show in London – the 799th year the event has been held. So we thought it was a good time to take a look at the office perhaps most famously associated with the annual running of the show (with the exception of the new Lord Mayor, of course) – the Pageantmaster.
The office dates back to at least the mid 16th century – some sources record Richard Baker of the Painter-Stainers Company as being the first to be given the role in 1566. It involves organising the annual grand three-and-a-half mile long procession of the new Lord Mayor (in this case Alan Yarrow) from Mansion House via St Paul’s Cathedral to the Royal Courts of Justice at Temple Bar (and then back again along Victoria Embankment).
The current Pageantmaster, Dominic Reid, took on the role in 1992 following the death of his father John who had carried out the role for the 20 years previously. Pageantmaster Court in the city was named for the role in the early 1990s (it had formerly been known as Ludgate Court). Mr Reid, an architect and soldier, is now the longest serving Pageantmaster in history – his father had held that title before him and before that the record had apparently been held by one Thomas Jourdan who managed 14 shows between 1671-85.
Mr Reid, who like his father before him has been awarded an OBE for his work on the Show, said at a Gresham College lecture in 2011 that as Pageantmaster, he is “responsible for all aspects of the design, organisation and production of the Lord Mayor’s Show. In this role I am the agent of the Senior Alderman below the Chair, and I am employed as a consultant to Lord Mayor’s Show Ltd the not for profit company limited by guarantee that puts on the show.”
The role is now so big – involving more than 7,000 participants, 20 bands, 150 horses and hundreds of vehicles – that it now reportedly takes the Pageantmaster a good nine months to organise all the details.
The Pageantmaster himself takes part each year in the procession and while he has apparently previously ridden a horse, he can now be seen standing on the back of a ceremonial City of London vehicle.
Famous as the home of the Apollo Club, the Devil – more completely the Devil and St Dunstan or The Devil and the Saint, thanks to its sign which showed the saint tweaking the Devil’s nose with pincers – was a Fleet Street institution.
Located at number 2, Fleet Street close to the Temple Bar, the tavern’s origins date back to at least 16th century but it was Elizabethan playwright Ben Jonson who made it home to the literary dining club known as the Apollo Club (the moniker comes from the name of the room in the tavern in which the club was located).
As well as Jonson, members of the club are said to have included William Shakespeare, Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope and Dr Samuel Johnson. Samuel Pepys is also said to have frequented the tavern.
A bust of Apollo was mounted over the door to the room and a verse of welcome on the wall – they apparently still exist inside the bank of Child & Co (now part of the Royal Bank of Scotland) which now occupies the site on which the tavern once stood. The ‘rules’ of the club – which have been penned by Jonson – also apparently hung over the fireplace (and the name of the club lives on in Apollo Court over the road).
The tavern is also noted for its associations with ‘Mull Sack’ (aka chimney sweep turned 17th century highwayman John Cottington) and hosted concerts and other important gatherings including that of the Royal Society which held its annual dinner here in 1746.
It was demolished in the 1787 when the site was annexed by the neighbouring bank. A plaque can now be seen on the bank’s wall in Fleet Street.
While it may not be the oldest (that remains a matter of some dispute), we can say that one of London’s oldest banks stands at 1 Fleet Street.
Child & Co’s origins go back to the mid-1600s when Francis Child entered into a partnership with Robert Blanchard to run a goldsmith’s business. In 1673, the business, now known as Blanchard & Child moved to the premises it now occupies.
Child later married Blanchard’s step-daughter and on Blanchard’s death in 1681, he inherited the entire company, renaming it Child & Co (knighted in 1689, Child later served as a Lord Mayor of London and as an MP) and in 1698 was appointed “jeweller in ordinary” to King William III.
Following Child’s death in 1713, his sons continued the business, transforming it into a bank. It’s first banknote was issued in 1729.
The bank passed into the ownership of the Earls of Jersey in the mid-1800s and in 1880, following the removal of the Temple Bar gate, rebuilt its premises.
The bank, which at one stage had a branch in Oxford, was later sold to London-based commercial bank Glyn, Mills, Currie, Holt & Co and this in turn was acquired by the Royal Bank of Scotland. They remain the current owners.
Interestingly, the bank is said to be the model for Tellson’s Bank in Charles Dickens’ novel, A Tale of Two Cities.
So we come to the final in our series on Wren’s London. This week we take a quick look at some of Wren’s remaining London works (keep an eye out for our upcoming ‘daytripper’ on Oxford for some detail of his works there)…
• The Monument. Built between 1671-77 to commemorate the Great Fire of London, it was designed by Wren and Dr Robert Hooke. For further information, see our previous post.
• The Temple Bar. Designed by Sir Christopher Wren in 1672 to replace a crumbling wooden predecessor, it’s only recently been returned to the City and now stands adjacent to St Paul’s. For further information, see our previous post.
• Churches. We’ve only looked in depth at a few of the existing churches Wren designed in London. But here are some of the others among the more than 50 he designed that still stand:
• St Benet Paul’s Wharf. Originally completed in 1685, it claims to be the only “undamaged and unaltered” Wren church in the city, having survived World War II intact. Now the Welsh church of the City of London. See www.stbenetwelshchurch.org.uk.
• St James Garlickhythe. Built according to Wren’s design, it was completed in 1682 (the tower not until 1717). It is known as ‘Wren’s Lantern’ due to its light interior. See www.stjamesgarlickhythe.org.uk.
• St Margaret Pattens. Built between 1684 and 1687 after the previous church was destroyed in the Great Fire, the church gets its unusual name of ‘pattens’ from wooden undershoes that were worn to elevate people out of the mud, and were sold nearby. See www.stmargaretpattens.org.
• St Margaret Lothbury. Completed in 1692, it now incorporates seven adjacent parishes thanks to losses in the Great Fire, World War II and building projects and is now officially known as the parish church of “St Margaret Lothbury and St Stephen Coleman St with St Christopher-le-Stocks, St Bartholomew-by-the-Exchange, St Olave Old Jewry, St Martin Pomeroy, St Mildred Poultry and St Mary Colechurch.” See www.stml.org.uk.
• St Martin-within-Ludgate. Rebuilding was largely completed by 1680. The previous church on the site was where William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania, was married. See www.stmartin-within-ludgate.org.uk.
Others, some of which have been rebuilt since Wren’s day, include St Andrew-by-the-Wardrobe, St Andrew Holborn, St Anne and St Agnes (Now St Anne’s Lutheran Church), St Clement Eastcheap, St Lawrence Jewry, St Mary Abchurch, St Mary Aldermary, Mary-le-Bow, St Michael, Cornhill, St Michael Paternoster Royal, St Nicholas Cole Abbey (being redeveloped as a centre for religious education), St Peter upon Cornhill, and St Vedast alias Foster. (We’ll be featuring some in more detail in later entries).
It’s been a while since I was in London so I was delighted to find that the Temple Bar had been restored (not to its original site, but to the city as a whole!). The only surviving gateway into the city of London, it was constructed in 1672 to replace a crumbling wooden predecessor and was designed by Sir Christopher Wren (he of St Paul’s fame). The Temple Bar stood at the junction of Fleet Street and the Strand until 1878 when, to help traffic flow, it was removed. Apparently it was intended that it would be rebuilt somewhere else in the city, but time passed and no suitable site was found, so it eventually ended up on an estate in Hertfordshire. Where it remained until 2004 when – thanks to the work of the Temple Bar Trust – it was able to be returned to the city – it is now located between St Paul’s and Paternoster Square – for all to now enjoy.
WHERE: Between Paternoster Square and St Paul’s Cathedral. Nearest tube station is St Paul’s. COST: Free to see (actual building not open to public). WEBSITE: www.thetemplebar.info.
The Temple Bar isn’t the only ‘monument’, for want of a better word, which has been relocated in London. Another is the Wellington Arch, a magnificent structure which was originally finished (though not really completed) in 1830. Then known as the Green Park Arch, it stood parallel with the Hyde Park Screen (it was created to be seen in conjunction with it) and was later adorned with a huge – and controversial – statue of Wellington. But by the 1880s, traffic flow was again a problem and so it was decided to move the arch to its current location, perpendicular to the Hyde Park Screen. As a footnote, when the arch was moved in 1883, the statue of Wellington was not placed back on top but moved to a new site – Aldershot, where it is now.
WHERE: Grosvenor Place, Westminster, SW1X 7. Nearest tube station is Hyde Park Corner. COST: Adults £3.70/child £1.90 (English Heritage members free – there is a joint offer for others combined with Apsley House). WEBSITE: www.english-heritage.org.uk/daysout/properties/wellington-arch/.
.
Exploring London 