Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
1
Horse Guards: Household Cavalry Museum
Whitehall • Daily: April-Oct 10am-6pm; Nov-March 10am-5pm • £6 •
T
020 7930 3070,
W
householdcavalrymuseum.co.uk •
!
Charing Cross or Westminster
During the day, two mounted sentries and two horseless colleagues are posted to
protect
Horse Guards
, a modest building begun in 1745 by William Kent, and
originally the formal gateway to St James's Palace. The black dot over the number two
on the building's clock face denotes the hour at which Charles I was executed close by
in 1649. Round the back of the building, you'll find the
Household Cavalry Museum
where you can try on a trooper's elaborate uniform, complete a horse quiz and learn
about the regiments' history. With the stables immediately adjacent, it's a sweet-
smelling place, and - horse-lovers will be pleased to know - you can see the beasts in
their stalls through a glass screen. Don't miss the pocket riot act on display, which ends
with the wise warning: “must read correctly: variance fatal”.
Downing Street
W
number10.gov.uk •
!
Westminster
London's most famous address,
10 Downing Street
, is the terraced house that was
presented to the First Lord of the Treasury, Robert Walpole, Britain's first prime
minister or PM, by George II in the 1730s. It has been the PM's o
cial residence ever
since, with no. 11 the of
cial home of the Chancellor of the Exchequer (in charge of
the country's finances) since 1806, and no. 12 of
cial headquarters of the government's
Chief Whip (in charge of party discipline). These three are the only remaining bit of
the original seventeenth-century cul-de-sac, though all are now interconnected and
house much larger complexes than might appear from the outside. The public have
been kept at bay since 1990, when Margaret Thatcher ordered a pair of iron gates to be
installed at the junction with Whitehall, an act more symbolic than effective - a year
later the IRA lobbed a mortar into the street from Horse Guards Parade, coming
within a whisker of wiping out the entire Tory cabinet.
Churchill War Rooms
King Charles St • Daily 9.30am-6pm • £17 •
T
020 7930 6961,
W
iwm.org.uk •
!
Westminster
In 1938, in anticipation of Nazi air raids, the basement of the Treasury building on
King Charles Street was converted into the
Churchill War Rooms
, protected by a
three-foot-thick concrete slab, reinforced with steel rails and tramlines. It was here that
CHANGING THE GUARD
Changing the Guard
takes place at two London locations: the Foot Guards hold theirs
outside Buckingham Palace (May-July daily 11.30am; Aug-April alternate days; no ceremony
if it rains;
W
royal.gov.uk), but the more impressive one is held on Horse Guards Parade,
behind Horse Guards, where a squad of mounted Household Cavalry arrives from Hyde Park
to relieve the guards at the Horse Guards building on Whitehall (Mon-Sat 11am, Sun 10am)
- alternatively, if you miss the whole thing, turn up at 4pm for the daily inspection by the
O
cer of the Guard, who checks the soldiers haven't knocked off early.
If you want to see something grander, check out
Trooping the Colour
, and the
Beating
Retreat
, which both take place in June (see p.25).
The Queen is colonel-in-chief of the seven
Household Regiments
: the Life Guards (who
dress in red and white) and the Blues and Royals (who dress in blue and red) - princes William
and Harry were both in the Blues and Royals - are the two Household Cavalry Regiments;
while the Grenadier, Coldstream, Scots, Irish and Welsh guards make up the Foot Guards.
The Foot Guards can only be told apart by the plumes (or lack of them) in their busbies
(fur helmets), and by the arrangement of their tunic buttons. The three senior regiments
(Grenadier, Coldstream and Scots) date back to the seventeenth century, as do the Life Guards
and the Blues and Royals. All seven regiments still form part of the modern army as well as
performing ceremonial functions such as Changing the Guard.
