ANIMAL STATUES IN LONDON 8
Animal Statues in London 8
Chiswick High Street
This first public statue of Chiswick resident William Hogarth and his pug Trump was unveiled in 2001. It was created by sculptor Jim Mathieson.
Trump appeared in many of Hogarth's paintings, notably (below) in Self Portait with Pug (1745).
Another self-portrait, The Muse of Comedy (above right), was X-rayed and found to originally include a dog urinating against a pile of Old Masters. I was interested to know if this dog was Trump. AI tells me "The dog in William Hogarth's The Muse of Comedy wasn't Trump, as it was painted centuries before Donald Trump was born". How we wish Hogarth was still around to paint over Donald.
Kensington Gardens
...... spotted above snack bar next to Princess Diana Playground.
Waltham Abbey
.....spotted above Waltham Abbey Church, thought to be where King Harold was buried in 1066.
Waltham Cross
The Four Swannes above the shopping precinct are a reference to the historic pub of the same name which once stood nearby. Demolished in the late 1960s, it was claimed to have been there since 1260. In the 1500s it became one of the original "post houses" where mail coaches could change horses.
Aldwych
The exterior of the Indian High Commission is festooned with all manner of beasts, some seemingly not indigenous to the subcontinent .....
The bust of Jawaharlal Nehru honours the first Prime Minister (1947-1964) of independent India. And there's also a reminder that the swastika wasn't invented by the Nazis but is an ancient symbol meaning 'conducive to well-being' in Sanskrit.
Fleet Street
The dragon stands on Temple Gate which marks the western entry to the City of London. The stag tops the Old Bank of England, now a pub with a Sweeny Todd theme. Click here for more on Fleet Street pubs.
Holborn Viaduct
Opened by Queen Victoria in 1869, the ornate Holborn Viaduct was the first flyover in central London. Made of cast iron, the road bridge is 1,400ft long and 80ft wide.
St Paul's Crypt
This memorial to Major-General Sir William Ponsonby depicts his death at the Battle of Waterloo. The British cavalry officer and politician was killed by French lancers after his horse became mired in mud. I'm pleased to report the café in St Paul's crypt is now fully open again.
Michael Wilding played Ponsonby in the 1970 film Waterloo.
Temple Bar Gate, Paternoster Square
Poultry
I couldn't find any statues of chickens in Poultry. But I did stumble upon this bee. I don't know the significance; anyhow, it makes a change from lions.
Dorset Rise
Ok quizzers, you can now add Bayard to Copenhagen, Marengo and Trigger in your list of famous horses. Bayard belonged to St. George, seen here slaying the dragon. According to legend, when George reached manhood, an enchantress gave him Bayard, along with armour and a shield. There be dragons in the movies which are much bigger than these.
Royal Exchange
Westminster Abbey
Another statue of St. George and the unfortunate dragon can be see on top of the Westminster Scholars War Memorial, also known as the Crimea and Indian Mutiny Memorial. Designed by George Gilbert Scott, it commemorates nineteen former pupils of Westminster School who died in two wars.
Below St. George a lantern tier with four Gothic niches houses four monarchs .....
Edward the Confessor, Henry III .....
.... Elizabeth I and Victoria.
Inevitably, the ubiquitous four lions guard the base.
Strand
This golden lion sits above the entrance to Twinings Tea Museum. Thomas Twinings narrow flagship store, here since 1717, is widely thought to be London's oldest shop.
Inside the shop, after squeezing past the tourists, you can see a wooden box with the inscription T.I.P. Coffee house patrons would drop a few coins into such boxes 'To Insure Promptness', the origin of the modern day tip.
Twinings is also the world's oldest logo in continuous use
Buckingham Palace
This relief can be found above the Royal Mews, the equestrian stables of the King. The building was originally where the royal hawks were kept when they were moulting and so not available for hunting. 'Mew' means moulting and the name stuck despite the fact the building was rebuilt as stables by Henry VIII in 1534.
Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office
The elaborately decorated building in Whitehall was originally the Colonial Office in the days when we assumed ladies walked around topless everywhere else in the British Empire.
You can just about make out a buffalo and a sheep in the last two.
Victoria Tower, Palace of Westminster
Victoria Tower Gardens
Two Nanny Goats with Kids were donated by Henry Gage Spicer, the director of a paper firm, for the poor children of the area who used the Gardens as a playground.
The playground, with it's rather odd wooden horses, still exists. However, there are no longer any poor children in these parts.
St John's Gardens, Horseferry Road
Installed in 2001 during the redevelopment of the Westminster Hospital site, this Fish Fountain replaced the 19th century original which had become derelict.
The gardens were onetime the churchyard of St John the Evangelist's Church. Closed for burials in 1835, it opened as a public garden in 1885.
Victoria & Albert Museum
The lectern, circa 1872, is a plaster and painted matte cast of a much older piece from St Martin's Church, Halle, Belgium.
On the right is a replica of The Brunswick Lion. The German prince, Henry, Duke of Saxony, commissioned the original for the front of his castle at Brunswick in 1166. The
lion became the heraldic animal of Brunswick, appearing on the city's seal and coins.
South Bank
The North Bank's benches have arms depicting camels and sphinxes. On the South Bank there are swans, also designed by George Vulliamy.
Waterloo Place
The statue of Field Marshal Lord Clyde in Waterloo Place is somewhat upstaged by its plinth. Clyde, a British Army officer from Glasgow, led the Highland Brigade in the Crimean War and was in command of the Thin Red Line at the Battle of Balaclava.
Blackfriars
Controlled Energy are a pair of horse statues by Sir William Reid Dick at opposite ends of Unilever House overlooking Blackfriars Bridge.
The statue opposite Unilever House is of Queen Victoria.
Kingston-upon-Thames
Yet more Gillie and Marc statues, including Dogman and Rabbitwoman, have appeared around Kingston town centre .....
Hayes, Middlesex
Skylark by Ben Dearnley is on the edge of Lake Farm County Park. The 60-acre open grassland space is a haven for many species of wild birds, including skylarks.
This massive statue of Nipper, the HMV dog, is the centrepiece of a huge new community development around the old EMI factory where artists, including The Beatles, Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd, had their records pressed.
The Old Vinyl Factory is now located in the main EMI building, producing high-quality records using vintage EMI presses.
There are plenty of other nods to the area's musical heritage ....
It's always nice to see some Fab Four memorabilia. I'd also like to think the music playing in this nice café was influenced by George Harrison's interest in Indian culture. But a more likely explanation is that 33% of the London Borough of Hillingdon is Asian.
The famous brand is, of course, based on Nipper attentively listening to a recording of his dead master's voice. Nice story, but total fiction.
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