Monument sights in London
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A
Piccadilly Circus
Together with Big Ben and Trafalgar Sq, this is postcard London. And despite the stifling crowds and racing midday traffic, the flashing ads and buzzing liveliness of Piccadilly Circus always make it exciting to be in London. The circus looks its best at night, when the flashing advertisement panels really shine against the dark sky.>/p>
Designed by John Nash in the 1820s, the hub was named after the street Piccadilly, which earned its name in the 17th century from the stiff collars (picadils) that were the sartorial staple of the time (and were the making of a nearby tailor’s fortune). At the centre of the circus is the famous lead statue, the Angel of Christian Chari…
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B
Albert Memorial
On the southern edge of Kensington Gardens and facing the Royal Albert Hall on Kensington Gore, this memorial is as ostentatious as the subject, Queen Victoria’s German husband Albert (1819–61), was purportedly humble. Albert explicitly said he did not want a monument and ‘if (as is very likely) it became an artistic monstrosity like most of our monuments, it would upset my equanimity to be permanently ridiculed and laughed at in effigy’. Ignoring the good prince’s wishes, the Lord Mayor (with Victoria’s consent) got George Gilbert Scott to build the 53m-high, gaudy Gothic monument in 1872; the 4.25m-tall gilded statue of the prince, thumbing through a catalogue for his G…
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C
Princess Diana Memorial Fountain
Opposite the Kensington Gardens’ Serpentine Gallery and across West Carriage Drive is this memorial fountain dedicated to the late Princess of Wales in 2004. Envisaged by the designer Kathryn Gustafson as a ‘moat without a castle’ and draped ‘like a necklace’ around the southwestern edge of Hyde Park near the Serpentine Bridge, this circular double stream initially invited visitors, especially children, to wade in the fountain. But when several people slipped on the smooth granite basin and injured themselves, a gravel path was built around it. Visitors still flock here to be mesmerised by the water’s flow both left and right from the fountain’s highest point, or to sun t…
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D
Speakers’ Corner
The northeastern corner of Hyde Park is traditionally the spot for oratorical acrobatics and soapbox ranting. It’s the only place in Britain where demonstrators can assemble without police permission, a concession granted in 1872 as a response to serious riots 17 years before when 150, 000 people gathered to demonstrate against the Sunday Trading Bill before Parliament. Speakers’ Corner was frequented by Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, George Orwell and William Morris; if you’ve got something to get off your chest, you can get rid of it here on Sunday, although it’ll be largely loonies, religious fanatics and hecklers you’ll have for company.
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E
Great Fire Memorial
This small statue of a corpulent boy opposite St Bartholomew’s Hospital, at the corner of Cock Lane and Giltspur St, has a somewhat odd dedication: ‘In memory put up for the fire of London occasioned by the sin of gluttony 1666’. All becomes clear, however, when you realise the Great Fire started in a busy bakery on Pudding Lane and finally burned itself out in what was once called Pye (Pie) Corner, where the statue now stands. This was interpreted by many as a sign that the fire was an act of God as punishment for the gluttony of Londoners.
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F
Cenotaph
The Cenotaph (Greek for ‘empty tomb’), built in 1920 by Edwin Lutyens, is Britain’s main memorial to the British and Commonwealth victims who were killed during the two world wars. The Queen and other public figures lay poppies at its base on the second Sunday in November (Remembrance Sunday).
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G
Tyburn Tree
A plaque on the traffic island at Marble Arch indicates the spot where the infamous Tyburn Tree, a three-legged gallows, once stood. An estimated 50,000 people were executed here between 1300 and 1783, many having been dragged from the Tower of London.
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