ROYAL STATUES

Queen Anne

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Queen Anne's Gate

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The Queen Anne's Gate statue of Queen Anne was sculpted to commemorate the monarch's part in promoting the Fifty New Churches Act of 1711, an item of legislation that sought to provide the financial wherewithal to erect new places of worship that would minister to the religious life of the city's fast-growing suburbs. The statue was to have been erected upon the top of a column that was planned to stand in front of the Church of St Mary-le-Strand (1717), the first of the new churches that was built. However, during the War of the Spanish Succession (1702-13) such an expensive project was regarded as being inappropriate. The queen died in 1714 before the building had been completed. She had antagonised her successor George I by bring to an end British participation in the conflict earlier than he had wished. Therefore, he was disinclined to look favourably on any project that sought to praise her memory. Thus, the column scheme petered out. Eventually, the statue was erected where, until the 1870s, a wall had partitioned the Queen Square development away from the rival Park Street one.

Location: Queen Anne's Gate, SW1H 9AA (red, pink)

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St Paul's Cathedral

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Sir Christopher Wren's rebuilding of St Paul's Cathedral (1710) was completed during the reign of Queen Anne. To commemorate the achievement a statue of the queen was erected in 1712 in front of the cathedral's western front. That the Francis Bird-sculpted figure's back was facing the building was something that lampoonists seized upon quickly.

With time, the statue's stone became weathered. In the late 19^thC a decision was taken by the Corporation of the City of London that it should be replaced by a copy. The present one (1886) was sculpted by Richard Claude Belt, who had a controversial reputation. In 1886 he was convicted of conspiracy to obtain money by false representations. He received a year-long prison sentence with hard labour. The Corporation decided against cutting its losses and instead arranged for materials to be sent into the Holloway Prison where the sculptor was serving his time. There, he finished the work. The statue was put in place and duly unveiled to the public. Upon his release he complained that his name was not present on the statue.

The Bird statue was rescued from a stonemason's yard and now resides on the South Coast.

Location: St Paul's Cathedral, St Paul's Churchyard, EC4M 8AD (purple, purple)

See Also: COLUMNS Seven Dials

King Charles I, Charing Cross

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The equestrian figure (1633) of King Charles I is the oldest of the royal statues that stand in the West End. It was sculpted by Hubert Le Sueur. In terms of scale, the statue makes the monarch out to have been a much taller man than he in fact was (4ft. 7in. (1.4m.)). The compliment is delivered discreetly through the placement of the 6ft. (1.83m.)-tall representation upon a horse. It was not erected following its completion.

With Parliament's victory in the Civil Wars and the execution of Charles in 1649, Oliver Cromwell ordered that the statue should be sold for scrap. John Rivett acquired it and was soon carrying on a lively trade in selling items supposedly made from it. The monarchy was restored in 1660. Subsequently, it emerged that the brazier had carried out a deception. He had buried the figure in his garden. It was unearthed and sold back to the Crown for 1600, which furnished him with a healthy profit. King Charles II (a genuine 6ft. in his hose) had it re-erected (1675) on Charing Cross. The site had been used for the executions of those regicides, who had not been dead or in exile when he had returned to England.

The sword fell off the Charing Cross statue of King Charles I in 1810. A passer-by picked it up and gave it to a Mr Eyre, who ran a nearby trunkmaking shop. The Office of Works demanded that he should give it to it. He refused to do so until he was given a receipt stating that he had. The officials refused to do so and the matter escalated, ever greater threats being made against him. They finally relented, wrote out the document and received the sword in return.

Location: Charing Cross, WC2N 5DX. The traffic island that stands between Trafalgar Square and the northern end of Whitehall. (purple, orange)

King Charles II, Soho Square

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Soho Square was originally called King s Square in King Charles II (d.1685)'s honour. In the garden that occupies the square's centre there stands a statue of the monarch. In the 1870s changes were made to them. During these alterations the statue was removed. Subsequently, it was re-erected at Grimsdyke House (1872) near Harrow. The librettist W.S. Gilbert acquired the property and thus the statue. His widow returned the sovereign to Soho Square, where he was re-re-erected in 1938.

Location: Soho Square, W1D 3QN (red, yellow)

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A Royal Audience

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There is a story that in years long past some of the square's park keepers used to entertain themselves by using his majesty as a form of ventriloquists dummy. They did this by secreting one of their walkie-talkies under his nameplate. Passers-by found that the statue would seek to draw them into conversation. As a variant, the parkies would place the device in a rubbish bin. The receptacle would shout at children if they failed to put their rubbish in it.

It is reputed that the gentlemen ended the practice because one of their number used a hidden walkie-talkie to bark at a police dog. That there was no obvious source of the noise drove the animal to distraction.

See Also: DOGS

Queen Charlotte, Queen Square

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Queen Square (1709-20) in Bloomsbury commemorates Queen Anne in its name. The statue (1775) that stands in its garden is of Queen Charlotte. Her husband King George III suffered from undiagnosed porphyria. This led to his spending time living privately in the square in the home of Dr Francis Willis, who was renowned for his treatment of the insane.

The pub The Queen's Larder derives its name from a property where the queen kept a store of treats for her husband, while he was residing with the physician.

Location: Queen Square, WC1N 3AR (blue, yellow)

Queen Elizabeth I, St Dunstan-in-the-West

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The statue of Queen Elizabeth I (d.1603) that supervises Fleet Street from the Church of St Dunstan-in-the-West was carved in the 16^thC as part of the decoration on the City of London's Ludgate. The gateway was demolished in 1760. The figure was then placed upon the church.

In 1929 the prominent suffragist Lady Millicent Fawcett set up a trust for Her Majesty's maintenance and repair. It is the only statue in London to have its own private income.

Location: St Dunstan-in-the-West, 186a Fleet Street, EC4A 2HR (blue, red)

Website: www.stdunstaninthewest.org

King George I

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Golden Square

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The statue of George I in Golden Square was erected in 1753. It had reputedly come from Cannons after the estate's sale by the Brydges family. The 9^th Baron Chandos almost certainly commissioned its creation as a means of publicly signalling his support for the new regime. This - and his liberal distribution gifts to members of the royal entourage - saw him raised through the peerage to ultimately become a duke. His actual politics were almost certainly more fluid. He may well have used his extensive financial connections to transfer money for the Jacobite cause.

Location: Golden Square, W1F 9JB (orange, grey)

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Leicester Fields

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In a piece of point scoring Frederick, Prince of Wales (d.1751) went to the trouble of having an equestrian statue of his grandfather, King George I, erected in Leicester Fields (now Leicester Square). The nub of this gesture being that, in Frederick's view, George I was a monarch to whom it was worth raising such a figure to whereas King George II, the prince's own father, was not.

The statue proved to have a somewhat chequered history. It was taken down for the last time 1871. Thereafter, it disappeared in mysterious circumstances.

Location: Leicester Square, WC2H 7NG (purple, orange)

King George IV, Trafalgar Square

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King George IV commissioned a statue (1834) of himself that was to have been placed upon top of Marble Arch (1827), which then stood in front of Buckingham Palace. However, the monarch died before the figure had been finished. In addition, it had also emerged that the Arch was too narrow for the royal carriages to pass through, therefore, a decision was made to relocate it. It was concluded that the statue might perhaps best be placed somewhere else. However, there was no obvious site that suggested itself and so the figure was temporarily parked upon a pedestal in the north-eastern corner of Trafalgar Square. It is still there.

Location: Trafalgar Square, WC2N 5DS (red, orange)

See Also: ARCHES Marble Arch

Queen Victoria, Kensington Gardens

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After numerous sculptures having been of members of the royal family, the family itself produced a sculptor. For many years a statue of the monarch, that Princess Louise had modelled, has stood on the eastern side of the Round Pond in Kensington Gardens.

Following the death of husband Prince Albert, Victoria had their daughter Alice, Helena, and Beatrice act in succession as her companions. Louise was too free a spirit for the queen to ask her to execute the role.

Location: The Round Pond, Kensington Gardens, W8 7PZ (red, turquoise)

King William III

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Kensington Palace

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The thirteen-year-old Prince of Wales (the future) King Edward VII visited France for the first time in 1855. He took a liking to the country. Subsequently, he made a number of trips to Paris that consolidated his Francophilia. He was particularly partial to the city s bordellos. He was a fluent French speaker and played a leading role in helping to foster the improvement of Anglo-French relations that occurred during the early years of the twentieth century.

The Kensington Palace Heinrich Baucke-sculpted statue (1907) of King William III was given to Edward by his nephew Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany. The present has a very precise reading. The German emperor was trying to appeal to his uncle for Germany and Britain to unite against the latter's centuries old rival France, with which the UK had recently signed the innovative entente cordiale (1904). (William III s adult life had been devoted to resisting French imperialism in Western Europe.) In 1914 Britain, France, and Russia went to war against Germany.

Location: Kensington Gardens, W8 4PZ (red, orange)

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St James's Square

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In the early 18^thC a proposal to erect a statue to the memory of King William III was welcomed. However, it proved to be hard to persuade people to pledge money towards the cost of the figure's creation. Eventually, Samuel Travers M.P. undertook to furnish the funds. In his 1724 will he set out instructions for his heirs to do so. Following his death, his relatives contested the dispositional document that he had left. The resulting litigation was resolved in 1793.

The William III Monument (1807) in the garden of St James's Square was sculpted by John Bacon the younger. The equestrian statue has rather a mixed message. The horse that the monarch's figure is riding upon is about to step upon the molehill that caused the animal to stumble. The fall, which threw the sovereign to the ground, was popularly believed to have caused his death. Therefore, the mortality of the soldier-king is blatantly portrayed. At the time of the statue s erection, Britain was deeply involved in a military struggle against the contemporary imperialism of Napoleonic France.

Location: St James's Square, SW1Y 4LB (purple, pink)

Cantankerous, Belligerent and Often Unruly Old Gentlemeny

Among the will's other provisions was that it furnished the financial wherewithal to set up an establishment in Windsor where seven elderly, bachelor naval officers could live at a time. Travers College, a corporate body, was established by letters patent in 1798. Its members became known as the Naval Knights of Windsor.

However, as a study of the Order of the Garter has noted, the Naval Knights for the most part proved to be ... a band of cantankerous, belligerent and often unruly old gentlemen. The College was wound up by the Naval Knights of Windsor Dissolution Act of 1892 and its funds were reassigned to pay for what became known as Travers pensions. These are paid to aid aged, former naval officers.

David Backhouse 2024