Charing Cross

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ANTIQUE J. HICKS LONDON HAND HELD BAROMETER SERIAL NUMBER 8991 GOLDTONE PERFECT
29 Jan 2012 at 10:53am
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ANTIQUE ENGLISH GEORGIAN STERLING SILVER - PARKER & WAKELIN LONDON 1760-1776
6 Jan 2012 at 11:28am
US $35.00
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Sir Walter Besant, in The Fascination of London, published in 1903, continues his survey of London with a look at Charing Cross:

There is certainly no part of London which has been so much changed as Charing Cross.

In other parts the houses are changed, but the streets remain.

Here the whole disposition of the streets has been transformed.

The secondary part of the name recalls the beautiful cross, the last of the nine which marked the places where Queen Eleanor's coffin rested on its journey from Lincolnshire to Westminster Abbey.

The cross was destroyed by the fanatical zeal of the Reformers.

The equestrian statue of Charles I, cast in 1633 by Le Soeur, occupies the site of the cross.

It had not been set up when the Civil War broke out, and was sold by the Parliament to John Rivit, a brazier, who lived by the Holborn Conduit, on condition that it should be broken up.

John Rivit, however, buried the statue, and dug it up again after the Restoration.

It was not until 1674 that it was actually erected, on a new pedestal made by Grinling Gibbons, in the place which it now occupies, which is the site of the old cross, the place where the regicides were executed, and where the Charing Cross pillory stood.

It is curious to remark on the preservation of the site of the cross.

It was apparently railed in; some of the stones of which it was made were used in paving Whitehall. Ballads were written on its destruction:

Undone, undone, the lawyers are;
They wander about the towne,
Nor can find the way to Westminster
Now Charing Cross is downe.
At the end of the Strand they make a stand,
Swearing they are at a loss,
And chaffing say that's not the way,
They must go by Charing Cross.

Cunningham.

Many of the regicides were executed at this spot in Charles II's reign, within sight of the place where they had murdered their King.

These men, according to the brutal temper of the times, were cut down when half hanged and disembowelled before a great concourse of people.

Pepys mentions going to the executions as to a show.

Later the pillory stood here in which, among others, Titus Oates suffered.

But, besides these dismal reminiscences, Charing Cross was at one time famed for its taverns and festive places of amusement, and was the resort of wits and literati in the eighteenth century.

Dr. Johnson speaks of the "full tide of human existence" being at Charing Cross, and if he could see it now he might be confirmed in his opinion.

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