London's Strangest Tales by Quinn Tom

Author:Quinn, Tom [Quinn, Tom]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781909396173
Publisher: Portico
Published: 2013-04-14T23:00:00+00:00

TRAFALGAR SQUARE – PERMANENTLY UNFINISHED

1838

Present-day Trafalgar Square is built on the site where Henry VIII and earlier kings once kept their birds of prey and their horses. The site was first built on when Chaucer was Clerk of the King’s Works in the 1380s and Richard II needed somewhere close to the rambling Palace of Whitehall for the royal hawks. Gradually the word mews was used not just for hawks and falcons but for other animals kept either for royal use or entertainment. The royal mews lasted well beyond the destruction by fire of the Palace of Westminster but the area in which the mews stood gradually became a warren of small dirty lanes where ‘thieves and vagabonds abound’, but by the time the area (by then known as the Bermudas) was cleared completely to allow for the building of the present square the word ‘mews’ had passed into the language and meant any narrow alleyway where horses were kept. Today in Belgravia and Mayfair the narrow back lanes behind grand house are still often called mews, for here the servants lived in small cottages or above the stables where their employers’ horses were kept.

Like most building projects in London, Trafalgar Square was the subject of endless disputes and arguments – the plans for the National Gallery (completed in 1838) were derided by many who thought the proposed building an architectural disaster.

But unlike most projects, which are eventually built and completed, however greatly modified during the planning process, Trafalgar Square has never been completed and remains unfinished to this day.

The unfinished bit is the empty plinth in the northwest corner – this has been empty ever since the square was first built and though in recent years some bizarre sculptures have been placed on the unused plinth (including an upside-down see-through version of the plinth itself!) there are still no plans to erect a permanent statue here.

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