The name commemorates the Battle of Trafalgar, a British naval victory of the Napoleonic Wars over France which took place on 21 October 1805 off the coast of Cape Trafalgar in Los Canos de Meca, a town in the municipality of Vejer de la Frontera (in the municipality of Barbate since 1940), Cadiz, Spain. The original name was to have been "King William the Fourth's Square", but George Ledwell Taylor suggested the name "Trafalgar Square".
In the 1820s George IV engaged the architect John Nash to redevelop the area. Nash cleared the square as part of his Charing Cross Improvement Scheme. The present architecture of the square is due to Sir Charles Barry and was completed in 1845.
Trafalgar Square is owned by the Queen in Right of the Crown and managed by the Greater London Authority, while Westminster City Council owns the roads around the square, including the pedestrianised area of the North Terrace.
From the time of Edward I to the early 19th century, most of the area now occupied by Trafalgar Square was the site of the King's Mews, which stretched north from the position of the original Charing Cross, where the Strand from the City met Whitehall, coming north from Westminster.
Clearance and development.
From 1732, the King's Mews were divided into the Great Mews and the smaller Green Mews to the north by the Crown Stables, a large block, built to the designs of William Kent. Its site is now occupied by the National Gallery. The Royal Mews were transferred to Pimlico in the 1820s, and the stable block used as a menagerie, and for the storage of public records, until its demolition in 1835. In 1826 the Commissioners of H.M. Woods, Forests and Land Revenues instructed John Nash to draw up plans for clearing a large area south of Kent’s stable block, and as far east as St Martin’s Lane. His plans left open the whole area of what was to become Trafalgar Square, except for a block in the centre, which he reserved for a new building for the Royal Academy. They also involved the demolition and redevelopment of an area of buildings between St Martin’s Lane and the Strand, and the construction of a road (now called Duncannon Street) across the churchyard of St Martin-in-the-Fields. The Charing Cross Act was passed in 1826 and clearance of the ground started soon after. After the initial clearance, development of the square progressed slowly. The National Gallery was built on the north side in 1832-38 to a design by William Wilkins, and in 1837 the Treasury approved Wilkins’ plan for the laying out of the square itself, but it was not put into effect. In April 1840, Wilkins having died in the meantime, new plans by Charles Barry were accepted, and construction started within weeks. For Barry, as for Wilkins, a major consideration was increasing the visual impact of the National Gallery, which had been widely criticised for its lack of grandeur. He dealt with the complex sloping site by excavating the main area of the square down to the level of the footway between Cockspur Street and the Strand, and constructing a fifteen foot high balustraded terrace with a roadway on the north side, with steps at each end leading down to the main level. Wilkins had proposed a similar solution, but with a central flight of steps. Plinths were provided for sculpture and pedestals for lighting. All the stonework was of Aberdeen granite. The estimated budget, excluding paving and sculptures, was £11,000. The earth removed was used to level Green Park. The next year it was decided that two fountains should be included in the layout. The square was originally paved with tarmacadam. This was replaced with stone in the 1920s.
Nelson's Column
Nelson’s Column had been planned independently of Barry’s work. In 1838 a Nelson Memorial Committee had approached the government, proposing that a monument to the victor of Trafalgar, funded by public subscription, should be erected in the square, and the government had provisionally agreed. A competition was held, the winning design, by the architect William Railton, being for a Corinthian column topped by a statue of Nelson, with an overall height of more than 200 feet, guarded by four sculpted lions. The design was approved, with the proviso that the overall height should be reduced to 170 feet, and construction began in 1840. The main construction of the column was completed, and the statue raised in November 1843. However, the last of bronze reliefs on the pedestal of the column was not installed until May 1854, and the four lions, although part of the original design, were only added in 1867. Barry was unhappy about Nelson’s Column being placed in the square. In July 1840, when its foundations had already been laid, he told a parliamentary select committee that "it would in my opinion be desirable that the area should be wholly free from all insulated objects of art".
Opening
The hoardings were removed and the square opened to the public on 1 May 1844, although the asphalt paving was still soft, and the fountains were not playing. There was still a hoarding around the base of Nelson’s Column, which was to remain for some years, and some of its upper scaffolding remained in place.
The square has become a social and political focus for visitors and Londoners alike, developing over its history from "an esplanade peopled with figures of national heroes, into the country's foremost place politique", as historian Rodney Mace has written. Its symbolic importance was demonstrated in 1940 when the Nazi SS developed secret plans to transfer Nelson's Column to Berlin following an expected German invasion, as related by Norman Longmate in If Britain Had Fallen (1972).
Discovery of interglacial deposits
Building work undertaken on the south side of the square in 1960 revealed a number of deposits from the last interglacial. Among the findings, dating from approximately 40,000 years ago, were the remains of cave lion, rhinoceros, straight-tusked elephant and hippopotamus.
Redevelopment
A major redevelopment of the square led by W.S. Atkins with Foster and Partners as sub-consultants was completed in 2003. The work involved closing the main eastbound road along the north side, diverting the traffic around the other three sides of the square, demolishing the central section of the northern retaining wall and inserting a wide set of steps leading up to a pedestrianised terrace in front of the National Gallery. The construction includes two lifts for disabled access, public toilets and a small café. Previously, access between the square and the gallery was by two crossings at the northeast and northwest corners of the square.
The plinths
Barry's scheme provided two plinths for sculptures on the north side of the square. A bronze equestrian statue of George IV by Sir Francis Chantrey, originally intended for the top of the Marble Arch, was installed on the eastern one in 1844, while the other remained empty until the late 20th century. Two more statues on plinths were added during the 19th century; General Sir Charles James Napier by George Cannon Adams in the south-west corner of the square in 1855, and Major-General Sir Henry Havelock by William Behnes, in the south-east in 1861. In 2000, the then Mayor of London Ken Livingstone controversially expressed a desire to see the two generals replaced with statues of people "ordinary Londoners would know".
The Fourth Plinth
Since 1998 the empty plinth in the north-west corner of the square - which has become known as the "Fourth Plinth" – has been used to show a series of specially commissioned artworks. The scheme was initiated by the Royal Society of Arts and continued by a Fourth Plinth Commission, appointed by the Mayor of London. A 1:30 scale replica of HMS Victory in a giant glass bottle by Yinka Shonibare was installed on the plinth in May 2010.
No comments:
Post a Comment