Whitehall is at the centre of the highest concentration of memorials in the City of Westminster, in which 47% of the total number of such works in the borough are located.[1] It includes the eponymous street of Whitehall and Horse Guards Parade, both important ceremonial spaces, and Horse Guards Road, which forms its western boundary with St James's Park. The area's monuments are mainly military in character, foremost among them being the Cenotaph, which is the focal point of the national Remembrance Sunday commemorations held each year.[2]
One of three busts of Charles I found in a builder's yard in Fulham by Hedley Hope-Nicholson, Secretary of the Society of King Charles the Martyr, in 1945.[3] Installed here in 1950.[4] The plaque below is inscribed HIS MAJESTY KING CHARLES I/ PASSED THROUGH THIS HALL AND/ OUT OF A WINDOW NEARLY OVER/ THIS TABLET TO THE SCAFFOLD/ IN WHITEHALL WHERE HE WAS/ BEHEADED ON 20TH JANUARY 1649.
Unveiled 12 August 1816.[5] A French mortar from the siege, presented by Spain in thanks for Wellington's lifting of the siege. The mortar is mounted on a figure of the mythological monster Geryon and (at the back) his two-headed dog Orthrus.[6] The support was made by the Carriage Department of the Royal Arsenal to Shipster's design.[7]
Commemorates an occasion in Dickens's boyhood when he visited this pub and asked for a glass of "genuine stunning" ale; he was given one, together with a kiss, by the landlady.[8][9]
Montford sculpted the relief panel on the attic storey facing Parliament Street, and the groups of Old Age and Youth flanking it; Frith produced the allegorical figures in the spandrels on both sides of the structure.[12]
Unveiled 14 February 1911. The statue of the Duke in his Garter robes stands on a pedestal of Darley Dale stone. Edward VII, as a close friend of the Duke, took a personal interest in the memorial, asking Hampton to bring the modello to Buckingham Palace for his inspection.[13]
Erected 1912 in the gardens of Gwydyr House; moved to present site in 1916. The statue was the brainchild of Lord Curzon, who felt that Clive had been insufficiently honoured for his role in establishing the British Empire in India. A marble version was also created for erection in Calcutta.[14]
Unveiled 11 November (Armistice Day) 1920 by George V. Lutyens's temporary cenotaph in wood and plaster, designed and built in two weeks in July 1919, proved so popular that this permanent version of the same design was erected the following year. It commemorates the dead of both world wars.[15]
Unveiled 25 June 1920 by the Duke of Connaught. Goscombe John was awarded this commission on the strength of his equestrian bronze of Lord Tredegar in Cathays Park, Cardiff. Trafalgar Square was initially considered as the location for this statue. It was stored for safekeeping at Berkhamsted Castle, Hertfordshire, between 1941 and 1949.[16]
Unveiled 30 May 1924 by the Duke of Connaught.[17] A scaled-down replica of Bates's 30-foot high bronze of Lord Roberts, erected in Calcutta in 1896. Another, earlier replica by Poole is in Kelvingrove Park, Glasgow.[18]
Unveiled 25 April 1925 by Winston Churchill.[19] Inscribed with words from the poem "1914. III. The Dead" by Rupert Brooke, who served in the RND.[20] Put into storage 1939, re-erected outside the Old Royal Naval College at Greenwich in 1959, and returned to its original site in 2003.[19]
Unveiled 16 October 1926. The bronze figures represent five individual soldiers from the Grenadier, Coldstream, Scots, Irish and Welsh Guards; they were cast from captured German guns. After it sustained bomb damage in the Blitz, Ledward asked that some of the "honourable scars of war" be left on the memorial.[23]
Unveiled 10 November 1937. The statue aroused great controversy, comparable even with the reaction to Jacob Epstein's early works. The depiction of the horse was deemed to be unnatural; Country Life noted that its legs were in the position for urinating.[24]
Carved from 40 tons of Portland stone. Corresponding sculptures of Fire and Air (completing the set of four elements) were originally intended for the building's southern entrance, but were vetoed by the Treasury.[25]
Unveiled 6 June 1980 by the Queen Mother. The texture of the lower parts of the statue was achieved by mixing old plaster from the studio floor with fresh plaster at the modelling stage. Another cast stands in Brussels,[27] at a traffic intersection called Montgomery Square.
Unveiled 2 November 1983 by Elizabeth II. The statue stands on a pedestal at the centre of a low stepped pyramid, a scheme much reduced in ambition from Belsky's competition-winning design which included fountains representing the four seas. The financial constraints and "a very restrictive brief" resulted in a finished work which dissatisfied the sculptor.[28]
Unveiled 25 May 1993 by Elizabeth II. For the installation of this, the last of the statues of Field Marshals on what was formerly called Raleigh Green, the area was re-configured by the landscape architects RMJM and the statue of Sir Walter Raleigh removed to Greenwich.[30]
Unveiled 3 December 1997 by Elizabeth II. Modelled on a 1924 sculpture by Goulden in the Foreign Office. The Hong Kong Handover transferred the Gurkhas' headquarters to the United Kingdom, which until that point had no memorial to the brigade.[31]
Unveiled 13 June 2000 by Elizabeth II. The group depicts the five-man crew of a World War II-era Comet tank; it is an enlarged version of Paulin's statuette of 1953 in the Tank Museum, Bovington, Dorset. Mallock's husband had been an officer in the RTR in the 1960s.[32]
Unveiled 9 July 2005 by Elizabeth II. Around the plinth are reliefs of servicewomen's clothing and protective costumes, appearing as if they have been hung up at the end of a working day.[33]
Unveiled 12 October 2006, the fourth anniversary of the bombings, by the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall. The memorial consists of a granite globe carved with 202 doves—one for each individual killed in the bombings—and a wall inscribed with their names.[34]
Blackwood, John (1989). London's Immortals: The Complete Outdoor Commemorative Statues. London and Oxford: Savoy Press. ISBN978-0951429600.
Bradley, Simon; Pevsner, Nikolaus (2003). London 6: Westminster. The Buildings of England. London and New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN978-0-300-09595-1.
Gleichen, Lord Edward (1973). London's Open-Air Statuary. Bath: Cedric Chivers Ltd.
Hughson, David (1817). Walks through London. Vol. 1. London: Sherwood, Neely & Jones.
Kershman, Andrew (2013). London's Monuments. London: Metro Publications.
Matthews, Peter (2018). London's Statues and Monuments. Oxford: Shire Publications. ISBN978-1-78442-256-1.
Ward-Jackson, Philip (2011). Public Sculpture of Historic Westminster: Volume 1. Public Sculpture of Britain. Vol. 14. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. ISBN978-1-84631-691-3.