Waterloo Place

Waterloo Place is a short but broad street in the St James's area of the City of Westminster, London. It forms a plaza-like space and is a southern extension of Lower Regent Street. Towards the northern end it is crossed by Pall Mall and at the southern end, by Carlton House Terrace, where it ends at the Duke of York Steps which lead down to The Mall. Located on the Place are several 19th and 20th century monuments to royalty, explorers and military people.

History

Included in the plan for London prepared by architect John Nash in 1814 was a broad plaza intended as a space for monuments, It would be the southern end of a prestigious new thoroughfare, later known as Regent Street, and would create a grand open area in front of Carlton House, the London residence of the Prince Regent, which stood on the south side of Pall Mall. The site had previously been occupied by St James's Market,Summerson 1935, p. 206 and several "low and mean houses" had to be demolished to make way for the development. Construction was financed and managed by the property developer, James Burton. The first leases on the new buildings in the street were taken out in 1815, by which time it was thought appropriate to name it after the British victory at the Battle of Waterloo which had taken place in June of that year, perhaps as a military counterpart to Trafalgar Square.

Residences in Waterloo Place quickly became fashionable due to the proximity to Carlton House. Charlotte Lennox, Duchess of Richmond lived at Number 7, while Lady Elizabeth Egremont, the estranged wife and former mistress of George Wyndham, 3rd Earl of Egremont, lived at Number 4. Following a fire in 1824, Carlton House was demolished and part of the vacant plot on the western corner of Pall Mall and Waterloo Place was offered by Parliament to the Athenaeum Club who were in temporary premises nearby. Accordingly, in 1826, Decimus Burton, the son of the developer, was commissioned to design an elegant building for the club. Parliament also offered the opposite site to the United Service Club with the specification that both buildings should be of a uniform design. However, the latter club were able to get agreement to some modifications that the Athenaeum were unwilling to follow, so that the two finished buildings were dissimilar.

Monuments

The focal point of Waterloo Place is the Duke of York Column, commemorating Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany, the commander-in-chief of the British Army during the Napoleonic Wars. It stands above a flight of steps leading down to The Mall in a space between the Western and Eastern terraces of the Carleton House Terrace, designed by Nash and Decimus Burton and built between 1827 and 1832. The column itself was designed by Benjamin Dean Wyatt and was completed in 1832.

Waterloo Place later became a space for memorialising non-royal heroism, due to it being Crown land and therefore administered by the Commissioners of Woods, Forests and Land Revenues, who were more amenable to public monuments than the Commissioners of Works and Public Buildings that controlled many other open spaces in the capital. The first of these was the Guards Crimean War Memorial, sculpted by John Bell and completed in 1861, which occupies a central position in the place. On the western edge, Matthew Noble's statue of Arctic explorer Sir John Franklin was unveiled in 1866, followed the next year by Carlo Marochetti's memorial to Crimean War hero, Colin Campbell, 1st Baron Clyde on the eastern side. In 1874, another Crimean general, John Fox Burgoyne was commemorated in a statue by Joseph Edgar Boehm, who also executed another to a Viceroy of India, John Lawrence, 1st Baron Lawrence completed in 1885.

In 1914, John Henry Foley's 1866 statue of Sidney Herbert, 1st Baron Herbert of Lea, the Secretary at War during the Crimean War, was moved from outside the War Office in Whitehall to stand close to the Guards memorial in Waterloo Place. It was joined in the following year by a new statue of Florence Nightingale by Arthur George Walker, making a group of three Crimean memorials in the centre of the roadway. Also in 1915, a statue of the Antarctic explorer Captain Robert Falcon Scott, sculpted by his widow, Kathleen, was erected next to that of Lord Clyde. In 1924, an equestrian statue of King Edward VII by Sir Edgar Bertram Mackennal was unveiled, also in the centre of the Place. The last addition was a memorial by Leslie Johnson to Sir Keith Park, known as "the defender of London" during the Battle of Britain, which was installed in 2010 next to Scott and Franklin.Kershman 2007, p. 98

File:Duke of York Column just off Carlton Gardens - geograph.org.uk - 2180070.jpg, Duke of York Column
File:Crimean War Memorial 01.jpg, The Guards Crimean War Memorial together with statues of Florence Nightingale (left) and Lord Lea
File:Statue of Sir John Franklin - geograph.org.uk - 6145476.jpg, Statue of Sir John Franklin
File:Statue of Colin Campbell, 1st Baron Clyde, London.JPG, Statue of Lord Clyde
File:John Fox Burgoyne Statue.jpg, Statue of Field Marshal Burgoyne
File:Statue at the junction of Waterloo Place and Carlton House Place - geograph.org.uk - 2180013.jpg, Statue of Lord Lawrence
File:Statue to Captain Scott, Waterloo Place, London W1 - geograph.org.uk - 894241.jpg, Statue of Captain Scott
File:King Edward VII Statue, Waterloo Place SW1 - geograph.org.uk - 979674.jpg, Statue of King Edward VII
File:Keith Park statue in Waterloo Place.JPG, Statue of Air Chief Marshal Park

References

Sources

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*{{cite book , last=Ward , first=Thomas Humphrey , author-link=Thomas Humphry Ward , date=1926 , title=History of the Athenæum, 1824-1925 , url=https://archive.org/details/historyofathenum0000ward/page/n7/mode/2up , location=London , publisher=Athenæum Club

Transport infrastructure completed in 1815
Streets in the City of Westminster