Charing Cross is widely known as the very centre of London.
But we’ll go back in time to when this wasn’t the centre of London but instead a rural village on the northern fringes of Westminster. We’ll go back to the year 1543 when one of the earliest maps of the area was a large panorama drawn by Anton van den Wyngaerde in 1543.
Wyngaerde was a prolific Flemish topographical artist who made panoramic sketches and paintings of towns in the Netherlands, France, Italy, Spain and England.
For our purposes this is part of his view of London. We have reconstructed a map of his, with extra information from a survey in 1561 of Ralph Agas from where we derive more of what you see here.
1543
In 1543, Charing was the name of a village. A cross had been built in the 13th century and frequently, the area was becoming known as Charing Cross instead of Charing.
You can see Whitehall running due south through The Court Gate. To the east of Whitehall was an area called ‘Scotlands’ – later called Old Scotland Yard.
Charing Cross
In the year 1290, Queen Eleanor of Castille, wife of Edward I, died quite unexpectedly near Lincoln.
Edward was heartbroken and ordered that her body be brought in ‘solemn procession’ back to London – to be buried in Westminster Abbey.
A procession of all the lords and ladies of the day had to walk behind the coffin as it made its way to London — a distance of over 200 miles.
Each evening the coffin was laid in a building en route. It was the longest formal procession that England has ever witnessed.
One of the stops was Waltham Abbey and the following day the procession walked the 15 miles from that point to Cheapside, where the queen’s body lay in the church of St Mary le Bow for the night.
On the next day the route was quite short, being only from Cheapside to the western end of the Strand where it was laid overnight in the church of the priory of St Mary Rounceval. On the day of the funeral service, the procession completed the short distance from this priory to Westminster Abbey.
Edward ordered that every place where Eleanor’s body rested be marked with a commemorative monument. A ‘cross’ was erected at the village of Charing immediately outside the priory, the work of the medieval sculptor, Alexander of Abingdon.
Priory and Hospital of St Mary Rounceval
There is no trace of the Priory and Hospital of St Mary Rounceval. Which today would stand of the top of Northumberland Avenue.
The Priory and Hospital of St Mary Rounceval was founded 1231 by William Marshall, Earl of Pembroke, to serve travellers on their way to the shrine of Edward the Confessor in Westminster Abbey.
‘Hospital’ simply meant a place where strangers could stay – the word in this sense became our modern word hostel or hotel.
Not many years after its foundation, in 1290, the Priory received its cross.
Like many Catholic institutions, St Mary Rounceval did not survive the reformation and the Priory of St Mary Rounceval was dissolved by Edward VI in 1549.
The Strand stretched east from here and ribbon development can be seen taking place along its length. It was still be a while before large houses lined the Thames behind the road. Incidentally we said The Strand just there rather than simply “Strand”, which is more common nowadays.
North of the village of Charing is the church of St Martin-in-the-Fields.
St Martin-in-the-Fields
There has been a church on this site since at least the medieval period. It was located in the farmlands and fields beyond the London wall, when it was awarded to Westminster Abbey.
It became a principal parish church in the early modern period as Westminster’s population grew. When its medieval structure was replaced by the present building, constructed in a neoclassical design by James Gibbs in 1726.
The Mewes
Directly north of the Cross at Charing Cross, was the Royal Mewes.
The royal hawks were kept at this site from 1377 and the name originates from the fact that they were confined there at moulting time (“mew” being derived from the French verb “muer”, to moult).
The building was destroyed by fire in 1534 and rebuilt as a stables, keeping its former name when it acquired this new function.
The word “Mews” generally took on the meaning of a place for horses generally after this all over London.
St James’s Field
There’s a road running north west from Charing Cross which later became the Haymarket.
To the west of that road was St James’s Field. The lands in the field were divided among several owners, including the Hospital of St James and the Abbey of Westminster.
Henry VIII enclosed this large field between 1536 and 1547 at the time of this map and created field boundaries.
In 1576 St James’s Field was bounded by a ditch. To the north was Piccadilly. To the east and west were the roads which later became known as Haymarket and St James’s Street. On the south it was bounded by an old highway which led from Charing Cross past St James’s Hospital to Hyde Park.
St James’s Hospital stood on the site now occupied by St James’s Palace and was founded, probably in the eleventh century, as a colony for fourteen leprous maidens.
Since the game Pall Mall was played there, the south section of St James’s Field was later renamed Pall Mall Field. The road later became called Pall Mall.
Spring Gardens
Spring Gardens were gardens. They featured a decorative fountain in the time of Elizabeth I that was set in motion by passers-by treading on hidden machinery, knowingly or unknowingly.
We’ve completed a circuit of Charing Cross. Let’s travel forward in time two hundred years.
1746
John Rocque created a major map of London and this is the Charing Cross section.
The main thing to note is how urban the area has became.
There’s a point on the map marking where Charing Cross has been but the memorial was destroyed in 1647 on the orders of Oliver Cromwell during the English Civil War.
Cromwell’s star faded and the site of the cross was occupied by a statue of King Charles I mounted on a horse. The site is recognised by modern convention as the centre of London.
The equestrian statue of Charles I is a work by the French sculptor Hubert Le Sueur. It was the first Renaissance-style equestrian statue in England, it was commissioned by Charles’s Lord High Treasurer Richard Weston.
It was installed in its current location in 1675.
Northumberland House
On the site of the Priory of St Mary Rounceval, Northumberland House has appeared.
This was a large Jacobean townhouse. It was the London residence of the Percy family, who were the Earls and later Dukes of Northumberland.
It stood at the far western end of the Strand from around 1605 until it was demolished in 1874. In its later years it overlooked Trafalgar Square.
The Royal Mewse
St Martin’s In The Fields is tucked away up St Martin’s Lane.
The Royal Mewse was rebuilt in 1732 to the designs of William Kent, and in the early 19th century it was open to the public.
Kent’s redesign was an impressive classical building occupying the northern half of the site.
There was an open space in front of it that ranked among the few large ones at a time when the Royal Parks were on the fringes of London and most squares in London were open only to the residents of their surrounding houses.
There is now of proliferation of mewses in the area.
Streets received formal names: Cockspur Street, Haymarket – since a market of hay was established there, Pall Mall. St James’s Field, now built over, has given way to the fashionable St James together with a market.
Spring Gardens
Spring Gardens is now the name of a road instead of gardens.
1799
We have a new map – the Horwood map of 1799 takes us to the beginning of the nineteenth century.
Not a lot has changed since the 1740s but this map shows the yards of the many inns of the Haymarket.
1865
However the 1865 Stanford map shows huge changes.
Trafalgar Square
The whole site of the Royal Mews was cleared in the late 1820s to create Trafalgar Square, laid out between 1837 and 1844. The National Gallery opened in 1838.
Nelson’s Column was built to commemorate Horatio Nelson’s victory at the Battle of Trafalgar. The monument was constructed between 1840 and 1843 to a design by William Railton.
Charing Cross station
To the east Charing Cross station has been built.
A 21 metre stone sculpture stood in front of the station, erected in 1865.
It was a reimagining of the medieval Eleanor Cross on a larger scale and more ornate. But it’s not on the original site being 200 metres away.
St Martin’s In The Fields is now in a prominent position. The coming of the square has rescued it from obscurity along its side road.
Waterloo Place
Speaking of Napoleonic Wars, Waterloo Place has been laid out.
1896
The wonderfully detailed mid 1890s Ordnance Survey map sees the disappearance of Northumberland House and a new street called Northumberland Avenue.
Northumberland Avenue
The Thames has retreated from the scene since the Embankment has been built, underneath which is both a major sewer and the District Line. Northumberland Avenue connects with this main new road.
Waterloo Place gained a statue of Florence Nightingale in 1915. It was the first statue erected of a female who wasn’t a royal.
Old County Hall was the headquarters of the Metropolitan Board of Works. When London County Council came along, it needed a bigger building ad moved to the South Bank.
What isn’t yet in place is Admiralty Arch – the Mall does not yet reach Trafalgar Square.
1950
But by 1950, the Mall does reach Trafalgar Square.
Admiralty Arch was designed by Aston Webb. It adjoins the Old Admiralty Building and was commissioned by King Edward VII in memory of his mother Queen Victoria – although he did not live to see its completion in 1912.
2022
The modern area has largely inherited the built environment of the twentieth century – the Second World War didn’t cause the destruction seen elsewhere in London.
While our general story is complete, there are many other tales to tell.