Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
17
Hyde Park Corner
he park's southeast corner,
Hyde Park Corner
is a better place to enter the park than
Marble Arch. You'll still have to battle with the tra
c, but at least you can visit
Wellington Arch
, which stands at the centre of London's first roundabout. A statue of
Wellington no longer graces the arch, but instead stands at ground level opposite his
erstwhile residence,
Apsley House
(see p.242). Wellington is depicted seated astride his
faithful steed, Copenhagen, who carried the field marshal for sixteen hours during the
Battle of Waterloo; the horse eventually died in 1836 and was buried with full military
honours at the duke's country pile in Hampshire.
Close by are two powerful war memorials unveiled in 1925: the first, the
Machine Gun Corps Memorial
, features the naked figure of David leaning on
Goliath's sword and the chilling inscription, “Saul hath slain his thousands, but
David his tens of thousands”; the larger of the two, the
Artillery Memorial
, includes
a 9.2-inch howitzer rendered in Portland stone, realistic relief depictions of the
brutality of war and the equally blunt, Shakespearean epitaph, “Here was a royal
fellowship of death”.
These two have since been joined by two much larger, very striking memorials: the
Australian War Memorial
is a gargantuan curved wall of grey granite slabs inscribed with
the names of the towns in which the soldiers were born and the battles they fought;
opposite stand the sixteen bronze spikes of the
New Zealand Memorial
, each of which is
inscribed with text, patterns and sculptures commemorating the bonds between New
Zealand and the UK.
Much more conventional in approach (and controversial in subject matter) is the
gargantuan
RAF Bomber Command Memorial
, unveiled in 2012, just inside Green Park,
on the eastern edge of Hyde Park Corner, as it joins Piccadilly. The tone is decidedly
triumphant, with a Neoclassical portico sheltering a larger-than-life air crew amid
defiant quotes from Churchill (and Pericles).
TYBURN GALLOWS
For nearly five hundred years,
Tyburn
was the capital's main
public execution
site, its
three-legged gibbet known as the “Tyburn Tree” or the “Triple Tree”, capable of dispatching
over twenty people at one go. Dressed in their best clothes, the condemned were first
processed through the streets in a cart (the nobility were allowed to travel in their own
carriages) from Newgate Prison, often with the noose already in place. They received a
nosegay at St Sepulchre, opposite the prison, and then a pint of ale at various taverns along
the route, so that most were blind drunk by the time they arrived at Tyburn. The driver had to
remain sober, however, hence the expression “on the wagon”.
The condemned were allowed to make a speech to the crowd and were attended by a
chaplain, though according to one eighteenth-century spectator he was “more the subject
of ridicule than of serious attention”. The same witness describes how the executioner, who
drove the cart, then tied the rope to the tree: “This done he gives the horse a lash with his
whip, away goes the cart and there swings my gentleman kicking in the air. The Hangman
does not give himself the trouble to put them out of their pain but some of their friends or
relations do it for them. They pull the dying person by the legs and beat his breast to dispatch
him as soon as possible.”
Not all relatives were so fatalistic, however, and some would attempt to support the
condemned in the hope of a last-minute reprieve, or of reviving the victim when they were
cut down. Fights frequently broke out when the body was cut down, between the relatives,
the spectators (who believed the corpse had miraculous medicinal qualities), and the
surgeons (who were allowed ten corpses a year for dissection). The executioner, known as
“
Jack Ketch
” after the famous London hangman, was allowed to take home the victim's
clothes, and made further profit by selling the hanging rope by the inch. Following the 1780
Gordon Riots, the powers-that-be took fright at unruly gatherings like Tyburn, and in 1783 the
Tyburn Tree was demolished.
