Nelson and Wellington

What does Trafalgar Square and Nelson’s column commemorate? The easy answer is Nelson’s victory over Napoleon’s forces at Trafalgar in 1805. Or more cynically keeping a German family on the throne and republicanism from these shores.

Napoleon Bonaparte was the scourge of the European monarchies, and the ruling elites of the day were determined to stop him. The Duke of Wellington, with the help of the common soldier and the Prussians, defeated Bonaparte ten years after the Battle of Trafalgar. But what monument is there to Wellington himself? There is a Wellington Arch and Wellington Barracks but they do not feature so prominently in popular consciousness as Trafalgar Square and Nelson’s column.

Wellington Arch sits on the roundabout on Hyde Park Corner (it has been moved a couple of times). But there is no statue of Wellington on top. There used to be but it proved too unpopular.

Between 1803 and 1805 Bonaparte amassed an invasion flotilla of 2,343 ships with the intention of invading Britain. This flotilla was kept in its home ports and prevented from invading by the Royal Navy’s Channel Fleet of 30 plus ships under Admiral Sir William Cornwallis; Nelson played no part in this. It was Cornwallis who put together the fleet that Nelson commanded at Trafalgar.

Nelson was of relatively humble origins. Progress through the ranks of the British Navy was on merit and Nelson became a popular hero and commander. Ashore he was mobbed by crowds as a celebrity would be today. Unfortunately for him but fortunately for his heroic status, he died at the height of his popularity during Trafalgar. Although Trafalgar could not stop Bonaparte it did give Britain naval supremacy. Nelson was no radical but Trafalgar was the cup final in a naval world series that would not be challenged for 100 years or more.

The British merchant and the industrialist were to gain power, wealth and empire from this naval victory. The British army of the time was not so egalitarian. Wellington’s commission was bought for him by his brother. Wellington may have been an effective general but he was no democrat. After his return from Waterloo he became a Tory MP and Prime Minister. After his first Cabinet meeting he is reported as saying “An extraordinary affair. I gave them their orders and they wanted to stay and discuss them.”

He got the nickname the ‘Iron Duke’ not because of military prowess but because of the shutters he had on his house to protect him from the mob. He was booed on the streets for the troops cutting down civilians at a meeting for democracy in Manchester (the Peterloo massacre).

Basically he was an old style aristocrat trying to halt social change. So what does Trafalgar Square commemorate? Not so much a decisive naval victory or the death of a popular hero, more a period of change and the birth of the ‘middle classes.’ And Wellington Arch, a fading era.

John Clark

Victoria embankment

One of my earliest memories of having, what you might call, a more adult conversation with my father was on a sunny late morning walking along the Victoria Embankment. It would have been the mid 60s and I don’t have a clue where we had been and I can’t even guess why we were walking along the north side of the river between Blackfriars and Westminster when we lived in Peckham but I clearly remember we were and that it was a warm, sunny, halcyon day.

There are some interesting, (well at least I think so), stories to tell based around this area not the least of which is that the place I was walking on that sunny morning so many years ago is a man made construction completed in 1870 to carry both the underground, and the sewers to
clean the river; however I don’t intend to go into that story as we could fill the magazine with it. Suffice to say that if you go into Embankment Gardens beside Villiers Street to can see where the riverside once was from the position of the river gate entrance of the Duke of Buckingham. In doing this 37 acres of new land was reclaimed from the River.

Oddly however there is a much older construction on the “new” riverside than Buckingham's Gate, in fact it is the oldest man-made construction in London. From further back in history, even than the woman for who it is named, Cleopatra’s Needle was originally built and stood in Egypt, around 1500BC. (If you remember Cleopatra was a consult to Julius Caesar who landed in Kent in a mere 55bc).

It was erected on the Victoria Embankment in 1878 following a long sea voyage and the loss of a crew which had been bringing it to London as a “gift” to the British people in recognition of Nelson’s victory over the French fleet, at the Battle of the Nile in 1798. It is made of granite and the obelisk is 68 feet high and 180 tons in weight.

A couple of odd facts about the pink-granite monolith that it stands on a pedestal, supposedly guarded by two sphinxes, I say supposedly ‘cos the Victorian designers got it wrong, in order to guard the Needle they should face out; instead they face in towards it. Under the Needle buried in the pedestal are two earthenware pots, containing various objects. This very early version of a time capsule holds a portrait of Queen Victoria, iron ropes and cables, a hydraulic jack, copies of an engineering magazine, and portraits of 12 of the most beautiful Englishwomen of the time!

Just as Cleopatra’s Needle forms a centrepiece between Waterloo and Hungerford Bridges, (where because of it’s presence the embankment has been given an Egyptian theme with the benches made with sphinxes and camels for arms), another monument also stands on the embankment forming the centrepiece between Hungerford and Westminster.

Completed in 1923 the Royal Air Force Memorial is a simple monument in Portland stone surmounted by a gilded eagle. The original intention was for the eagle to face inwards to the embankment but the design was altered at the last moment so the eagle faced across the river, symbolically to France. The position was not the first choice, discarding a proposal to join the Army and the Navy in building a memorial opposite Buckingham Palace, the Royal Air Force Memorial Fund had hoped to raise a Cross on the ground between Westminster Abbey and St Margaret’s Church; a hope that the Dean of Westminster was unable to approve because he preferred not to consider a memorial for the Royal Air Force alone. So offered a site at the head of the Whitehall Stairs, that’s where the memorial went.

Currently a new monument is being built, the Battle of Britain Monument which is being sited on an existing panelled granite structure 25 metres long. This structure was originally designed as a smoke outlet for underground trains when they were powered by steam engines. It has been filled up and blocked for many years.

A walkway will be cut obliquely through the middle of the structure, and bronze reliefs, depicting aspects of the Battle in the air and the back-up on the ground, will be placed along either side.

I feel this is quite appropriate as both the RAF Memorial and Cleopatra’s Needle were damaged by enemy bombs in the last war, which I remember my father showing me – along with the remains of a pavement artist’s work which had been abandoned there from the day before.

Whenever I walk down the embankment today, especially in the sun, I think of him – not much has changed there since that day. I only wish I knew why we were there – and where we’d been.

Laurie Smith