Tour of Three Arches

Having been to the beach on the first day of this four day weekend, I thought I'd do some Saturday sightseeing. Wanting something a little different, and hopefully fairly free of real tourists, I decided to visit three of London's arches.

First stop was Wellington Arch, which stands on a traffic island at Hyde Park Corner, and is one of those arches that isn't now where it started off. It was designed in 1825 by Decimus Burton and originally intended by King George IV as a mark of Wellington's defeat of Napoleon and an entrance to Constitution Hill. When completed in 1828, an enormous statue of the Duke of Wellington stood on top of it. By 1883, the narrowness of the arch was causing traffic hold-ups around Hyde Park Corner and so it was dismantled and moved by 20 metres to its current location to allow for road widening. The Wellington Statue was removed and in 1912 its place taken by the amazing "Peace Descending on the Quadriga of War" by Adrian Jones, which is still the largest bronze statue in London (and Western Europe).

Despite its solid external looks, the arch is hollow and until 1992 housed the second smallest police station in London (beaten only by that in Trafalgar Square). Half of the arch provides a ventilation shaft for the underground but the rest is open to the public, who can enjoy looking across London from the third floor balconies. For me today, these provided a good view down on a convoy of open top buses full of proud Englishmen and women celebrating St George's Day with very enthusiastic, if not entirely, tuneful renditions of Jerusalem. Just over this weekend, Wellington Arch is hosting the Let Them Eat Cake exhibition, showing some recreations of royal wedding cakes, as well as some amazing original designs. The Arch is licensed as a wedding and reception venue. Pretty sure that it wasn't on the shortlist for next Friday's royal event but it would be an interesting choice for a somewhat more intimate occasion.

A short walk across Hyde Park, I reached Marble Arch, which is another arch that has been relocated to a traffic island, standing at the hugely busy junction of Edgware Road, Oxford Street, Park Lane and Bayswater Road. Also commemorating Wellington's victory, it was designed in 1828, by John Nash. It originally stood on The Mall as a grand gateway to Buckingham Palace, which at the time did not have its current familiar front. The arch was moved to its present location, in the early 1850s when the front (east) wing of the palace was constructed to provide additional space for Queen Victoria and her expanding family. Like Wellington Arch, it served, until 1950, as a police station.

My third arch was Admiralty Arch, which has not been moved and stands at the junction of The Mall and Trafalgar Square. King Edward VI commissioned the arch in memory of his mother Queen Victoria, but did not live to see it. The arch was designed by Sir Aston Webb and completed in 1912. Its name comes from the adjoining Old Admiralty Building but the arch has no naval connections itself. It comprises five arches: the outer two used for pedestrians, the next pair for vehicles and the central arch used only on state occasions, although it won't be used on Friday.

Of the three, Wellington Arch was by far my favourite. Mostly because of being able to climb it and enjoy the views.  And partly, of course, because it's  made of Portland stone.  Marble Arch has always seemed a bit sinister as I associate it with the nearby site of the Tyburn gallows, although these ceased use before the arch was even conceived. And Admiralty Arch, for all its splendour, is really a working building rather than a landmark with which one can interact. It seems that having been relocated to a traffic island rather than remaining over a public highway works actually well for an arch from an accessibility point of view.