Trafalgar Square

Kyrgyz – Russian Slavic University

Economic faculty

 

 

 

 

 

Trafalgar Square

 

 

 

 

 

Zhalibaeva Mariya

FC 3-11 

Trafalgar Square

Trafalgar Square is a public space and tourist attraction in central London, United Kingdom, built around the area formerly known as Charing Cross. It is in the borough of the City of Westminster. At its centre is Nelson's Column, which is guarded by four lion statues at its base. There are a number of statues and sculptures in the square, with one plinth displaying changing pieces of contemporary art. The square is also used for political demonstrations and community gatherings, such as the celebration of New Year's Eve.

The name commemorates the Battle of Trafalgar (1805), a British naval victory of the Napoleonic Wars over France. The original name was to have been "King William the Fourth's Square", but George Ledwell Taylor suggested the name "Trafalgar Square".

In the 1820s, George IV engaged the architect John Nash to redevelop the area. Nash cleared the square as part of his Charing Cross Improvement Scheme. The present architecture of the square is due to Sir Charles Barry and was completed in 1845.

Trafalgar Square is owned by the Queen in Right of the Crown, and managed by the Greater London Authority, while Westminster City Council owns the roads around the square, including the pedestrianised area of the North Terrace.

The square consists of a large central area with roadways on three sides, and a terrace to the north, in front of the National Gallery. The roads around the square form part of the A4 road.The square was formerly surrounded by a one-way traffic system, but works completed in 2003 reduced the width of the roads and closed the northern side to traffic.

Nelson's Column is in the centre of the square, flanked by fountains designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens in 1937-9 as replacements for two earlier fountains of Peterhead granite (now in Canada), and guarded by four monumental bronze lions sculpted by Sir Edwin Landseer. The column is topped by a statue of Horatio Nelson, the vice admiral who commanded the British Fleet at Trafalgar.

On the north side of the square is the National Gallery and to its east St Martin-in-the-Fields church. The square adjoins The Mall entered through Admiralty Arch to the southwest. To the south is Whitehall, to the east Strand and South Africa House, to the north Charing Cross Road and on the west side Canada House.

 

History

From the time of Edward I to the early nineteenth century, most of the area now occupied by Trafalgar Square was the site of the King's Mews, which stretched north from the position of the original Charing Cross, where the Strand from the City met Whitehall, coming north from Westminster.

Clearance and Development

From 1732, the King's Mews were divided into the Great Mews and the smaller Green Mews to the north by the Crown Stables, a large block, built to the designs of William Kent. Its site is now occupied by the National Gallery. The Royal Mews were transferred to Pimlico in the 1820s, and the stable block used as a menagerie, and for the storage of public records, until its demolition in 1835. In 1826 the Commissioners of H.M. Woods, Forests and Land Revenues instructed John Nash to draw up plans for clearing a large area south of Kent’s stable block, and as far east as St Martin’s Lane. His plans left open the whole area of what was to become Trafalgar Square, except for a block in the centre, which he reserved for a new building for the Royal Academy. They also involved the demolition and redevelopment of an area of buildings between St Martin’s Lane and the Strand, and the construction of a road (now called Duncannon Street) across the churchyard of St Martin-in-the-Fields. The Charing Cross Act was passed in 1826 and clearance of the ground started soon after.

After the initial clearance, development of the square progressed slowly. The National Gallery was built on the north side in 1832-8 to a design by William Wilkins, and in 1837 the Treasury approved Wilkins’ plan for the laying out of the square itself, but it was not put into effect. In April 1840, Wilkins having died in the meantime, new plans by Charles Barry were accepted, and construction started within weeks. For Barry, as for Wilkins, a major consideration was increasing the visual impact of the National Gallery, which had been widely criticised for its lack of grandeur. He dealt with the complex sloping site by excavating the main area of the square down to the level of the footway between Cockspur Street and the Strand, and constructing a fifteen foot high balustraded terrace with a roadway on the north side, with steps at each end leading down to the main level. Wilkins had proposed a similar solution, but with a central flight of steps. Plinths were provided for sculpture and pedestals for lighting. All the stonework was of Aberdeen granite. The estimated budget, excluding paving and sculptures, was £11,000. The earth removed was used to level Green Park. The next year it was decided that two fountains should be included in the layout. The square was originally paved with tarmacadam. This was replaced with stone in the 1920s.

Nelson's Column

Nelson’s Column had been planned independently of Barry’s work. In 1838 a Nelson Memorial Committee had approached the government, proposing that a monument to the victor of Trafalgar, funded by public subscription, should be erected in the square, and the government had provisionally agreed. A competition was held, the winning design, by the architect William Railton, being for a Corinthian column topped by a statue of Nelson, with an overall height of more than 200 feet, guarded by four sculpted lions. The design was approved, with the proviso that the overall height should be reduced to 170 feet, and construction began in 1840. The main construction of the column was completed, and the statue raised, in November 1843. However, the last of bronze reliefs on the pedestal of the column was not installed until May 1854, and The four lions, although part of the original design, were only added in 1867.

Barry was unhappy about Nelson’s column being placed in the square. In July 1840, when its foundations had already been laid, he told a parliamentary select committee "it would in my opinion be desirable that the area should be wholly free from all insulated objects of art".

Opening

The hoardings were removed and the square opened to the public on 1 May 1844, although the asphalt paving was still soft, and the fountains were not playing. There was still a hoarding around the base of Nelson’s column, which was to remain for some years, and some of its upper scaffolding remained in place.

The square has become a social and political focus for visitors and Londoners alike, developing over its history from "an esplanade peopled with figures of national heroes, into the country's foremost place politique", as historian Rodney Mace has written. Its symbolic importance was demonstrated in 1940 when the Nazi SS developed secret plans to transfer Nelson's Column to Berlin following an expected German invasion, as related by Norman Longmate in If Britain Had Fallen (1972).

Discovery of interglacial deposits

Building work undertaken on the south side of the Square in 1960 revealed a number of deposits from the last interglacial. Among the findings, dating from approximately 40,000 years ago, were the remains of cave lion, rhinoceros, straight-tusked elephant and hippopotamus.

 

Redevelopment

A major redevelopment of the square led by WS Atkins with Foster and Partners as sub-consultants was completed in 2003. The work involved closing the main eastbound road along the north side, diverting the traffic around the other three sides of the square, demolishing the central section of the northern retaining wall and inserting a wide set of steps leading up to a pedestrianised terrace in front of the National Gallery. The construction includes two lifts for disabled access, public toilets, and a small café. Previously, access between the square and the Gallery was by two crossings at the northeast and northwest corners of the square.

Statues and monuments

The plinths

Barry's scheme provided two plinths for sculptures on the north side of the square. A bronze equestrian statue of George IV by Sir Francis Chantrey, originally intended for the top of the Marble Arch,[5] was installed on the eastern one in 1844, while the other remained empty until the late twentieth century. Two more statues on plinths were added during the nineteenth century; General Sir Charles James Napier by George Cannon Adams in the south-west corner of the square in 1855, and Major-General Sir Henry Havelock by William Behnes, in the south-east in 1861. In 2000, the then Mayor of London Ken Livingstone controversially expressed a desire to see the two generals replaced with statues of people "ordinary Londoners would know".

The Fourth Plinth

Since 1998 the empty plinth in the north-west corner of the square - which has become known as the "Fourth Plinth" – has been used to show a series of specially commissioned artworks. The scheme was initiated by the Royal Society of Arts and continued by a Fourth Plinth Commission, appointed by the Mayor of London. A 1:30 scale replica of HMS Victory in a giant glass bottle by Yinka Shonibare was installed on the plinth in May 2010.

Other statues

There are three busts of admirals against the north wall of the square. Those of Lord Jellicoe by Sir Charles Wheeler and Lord Beatty by William MacMillan were installed in 1948 in conjunction with the square's two fountains, which also commemorate the two men. A bust of the Second World War First Sea Lord Admiral Cunningham by Franta Belsky was unveiled alongside them on 2 April 1967.

On the south side of the square, on the site of the original Charing Cross, is a bronze equestrian statue of Charles I by Hubert Le Sueur. It was cast in 1633, and placed in its present position in 1678.

There are two statues on the lawn in front of the National Gallery: James II by Grinling Gibbons to the west of the portico, and George Washington, a replica of a work by Jean-Antoine Houdon, to the east. The latter, was a gift from the state of Virginia installed in 1921.

Two statues erected in the nineteenth century have since been removed. One, of Edward Jenner, the discoverer of vaccination, was set up in the south-west corner of the square in 1858, next to that of Napier. Sculpted by William Calder Marshall, it showed Jenner sitting in a chair in a relaxed pose, and was inaugurated at a ceremony presided over by Prince Albert. It was moved to Kensington Gardens in 1862. The other, of General Charles George Gordon by Hamo Thornycroft, was erected on an eighteen-foot high pedestal between the two fountains in 1888. It was removed in 1943 and re-sited on the Victoria Embankment ten years later.

Fountains

When the square was laid out in the 1840s, the fountains' primary purpose was not aesthetic, but rather to reduce the open space available and the risk of riotous assembly. They were originally fed by water pumped from an artesian well by a steam engine sited behind the National Gallery. In the late 1930s it was decided to replace the stone basins and the pump.The new fountains were built to a design by Sir Edwin Lutyens at a cost of almost £50,000. The old fountains were bought for presentation to the Canadian government, and are now in Ottawa and Regina. The present fountains are memorials to Lord Jellicoe (western side) and Lord Beatty (eastern side).

Further restoration work became necessary and was completed by May 2009. The pump system was replaced with a new pump capable of sending an 80-foot (24 m) jet of water into the air. A new LED lighting system was also installed during this restoration to reduce the cost of lighting maintenance. The new lighting has been designed with the London 2012 Summer Olympics in mind and for the first time will project many different combinations of colors on to the fountains. The new lighting system has a much lower energy requirement and will reduce its carbon footprint by around 90%.

 

New Year events

For many years, revellers celebrating the start of a New Year have gathered in the square, despite a lack of civic celebrations being arranged. The lack of official events in the square was partly because the authorities were concerned that actively encouraging more partygoers would cause overcrowding. Since 2005, a firework display centred on London Eye and the South Bank of the Thames has been provided as an alternative.

Christmas ceremony

There has been a Christmas ceremony at Trafalgar Square every year since 1947. A Norway Spruce (or sometimes a fir) is given by Norway's capital Oslo and presented as London's Christmas tree, as a token of gratitude for Britain's support during World War II. (Besides the general war support, Norway's Prince Olav, as well as the country's government, lived in exile in London throughout the war.) As part of the tradition, the Lord Mayor of Westminster visits Oslo in the late autumn to take part in the felling of the tree, and the Mayor of Oslo then comes to London to light the tree at the Christmas ceremony.

The lighting ceremony of a Christmas Tree is another reason why Trafalgar Square is London's most famous square. Switching on the lights of a giant Christmas tree has been a historical part of Christmas season in London since 1947. The annual ceremony reminds people in London of the countdown to Christmas and is usually being held 12 days before December 25 each year. This festivity is open to the public and it gathers a large number of people who would like to see the lighting of one of Britain's most famous Christmas Trees. This is usually accompanied with several nights of Christmas Carol singing programme, series of performances and events to entertain the crowd. In 2012, its the 65th time that London has been presented with a Christmas tree from Oslo, Norway. Performances during the ceremony included Norwegian trumpeter Tine Thing Helseth alongside the St. Martin-in-the-Fields choir and the Regend Hall Band of the Salvation Army. According to the Norweigeian foresters, only the best tree was presented from their forest for the people of London. Fondly described by the woodsmen who care for it as 'the queen of the forest', it can reach up to 25 metres in height and is between 50 and 100 years old. The giant Christmas Tree is taken down on the 12th night of Christmas for recycling.