Trafalgar Square
London's most famous square has a plinth that stood empty for 150 years, a police station in a lamp post and a column topped by a hero too high to see.
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Quick Facts
- Location
- Charing Cross, central London, between the National Gallery and Whitehall
- Named
- Trafalgar Square, 1835, after Nelson's victory of 1805
- Laid out
- 1840s, to a design by Sir Charles Barry
- Nelson's Column
- About 51.6 m (169 ft) tall, completed in 1843; designed by William Railton
- Lions
- Four bronzes by Sir Edwin Landseer, added in 1867
- Fourth Plinth
- Empty until 1999, now home to rotating contemporary art commissions
- Column granite
- Quarried at Foggintor on Dartmoor
- Christmas tree
- A Norwegian spruce, given annually since 1947
The hero you can't actually see
Horatio Nelson stands about 51 metres above the pavement, which means almost nobody has ever had a proper look at his face. The statue is 5.5 metres tall, carved by Edward Hodges Baily in sections of Craigleith stone, and from the ground it is a dark silhouette against the sky. The column beneath it is Dartmoor granite from Foggintor quarry, designed by William Railton and finished in 1843. Its bronze capital is said to have been cast from guns salvaged from the wreck of the Royal George. Four bronze reliefs around the base show Nelson's great battles: Cape St Vincent, the Nile, Copenhagen and Trafalgar. They were cast from captured French cannon. Nelson died at Trafalgar on 21 October 1805, and the square was named in his honour in 1835, before the column existed.
A square built on the royal stables
Before the square, this was the site of the Royal Mews, where the king's hawks and later his horses were kept. When John Nash's grand redevelopment of the area reached Charing Cross in the 1820s, the mews were cleared to make room for a public space. Sir Charles Barry took over the design and raised the north terrace in front of the National Gallery, which is why you climb steps up to the gallery from the square. The great fountains arrived in the 1840s. The ones you see today are the 1930s replacements by Sir Edwin Lutyens, and they double as memorials to Admirals Jellicoe and Beatty. The spot also has older roots. The statue of Charles I on horseback, cast in 1633 by Hubert Le Sueur, stands at the south end, near the site of the medieval Eleanor Cross at Charing Cross. Road distances from London are measured from here.
Landseer's lions and the plinth with no one on it
The four huge lions at the foot of the column weren't there for the opening. The square sat without them for over two decades, and Edwin Landseer's bronzes only arrived in 1867. Landseer was already a famous painter of animals, though he'd never made a sculpture on this scale. Then there is the Fourth Plinth, in the north-west corner. It was built in the 1840s to carry an equestrian statue, but the money ran out and the plinth stayed bare for about 150 years. Since 1999 it has been a stage for contemporary art, from Mark Quinn's Alison Lapper Pregnant in 2005 to Yinka Shonibare's Nelson's Ship in a Bottle in 2010 and Katharina Fritsch's giant blue cockerel in 2013. My favourite is Antony Gormley's One & Other in 2009, when 2,400 members of the public each took an hour on the plinth, one after another, for 100 days.
The square where Britain goes to shout
Trafalgar Square has been the country's unofficial protest ground since the 19th century. Chartists, suffragettes, CND marchers in the 1950s, anti-poll-tax demonstrators in 1990 and huge anti-war crowds in the 2000s have all filled it. It is just as much a place for celebrations and rituals. Crowds gather here on New Year's Eve, and sports fans converge after big victories. Each December a Norwegian spruce goes up, a thank-you from Oslo for Britain's support in the Second World War, a tradition that began in 1947. The pigeons were once the square's other famous residents, with tourists buying seed to feed them. Selling it was banned in 2001 and feeding was outlawed in 2003, and the flocks have thinned dramatically since.
Small details worth hunting for
Look at the south-east corner and you'll spot what is often called Britain's smallest police station: a hollowed-out lamp post with a tiny space inside, built so officers could keep watch on the crowds. On the north terrace wall, near the steps, are brass marks set in the stone showing the imperial standards of length, including the inch, the foot and the yard. They were put there in 1876 so passers-by could check their rulers. Then turn around. St Martin-in-the-Fields sits at the north-east corner, and Admiralty Arch frames the route towards Buckingham Palace. Stand by the lions and you have the National Gallery behind you, Whitehall ahead and Big Ben just down the road.
Notable people
- Horatio Nelson
- William Railton
- Sir Charles Barry
- Sir Edwin Landseer
- Edward Hodges Baily
- Sir Edwin Lutyens
- Antony Gormley
- Yinka Shonibare
- Hubert Le Sueur
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