Category: Tours

THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON TOUR DAY ONE, CONTINUED: THE TOWER OF LONDON

Heading for the entrance

The remainder of the former menageries: sculptured lions

Our Guide, a Beef Eater aka Yeoman Warder
He explained to us the significance of the wonderful display of hand-made ceramic poppies.  One was cast for each person killed from Great Britain and the Commonwealth, almost 800,000, to be placed around the Tower of London by the anniversary of the conclusion of World War I on November 18, 1818.  It was, he pointed out to us in September 2014, one hundred years since the beginning of the Great War, or, as he slyly added, “For you Americans, 97 years!”
Each poppy is hand-made

The final spray of poppies, to be preserved,
by popular demand
For more information about the art installation Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red,  click here. 

Kristine and I soon abandoned the tour and struck out to find the Wellington Exhibition
as advertised on large posters around London. Example below.
As you can imagine we  were eager to see this exhibition at the Tower.

We started out assured by a guard we would find it if we just kept going…
We didn’t even stop to see whose bed this was.
We squeezed through cramped corridors and around one narrow curving staircase after another. and often peeked through windows and arrow slits.
Farther and farther…
Ar least we got a good view of the nooks and crannies of the Tower ramparts

“On 15 June 1845, the Duke of Wellington, hero of the Battle of Waterloo and Constable of the Tower, laid the foundation stone of these barracks, named after his greatest victory. Built to house up to 1,000 soldiers, the barracks were designed by the Royal Engineers, The soldier outside is part of the garrison tradition, still active and guarding the Tower today.
Today, the Waterloo Barracks contain a smaller barracks, offices and the Jewel House. The building also overlooks the military Parade Ground. The ceremonial public duty of the soldiers stationed here is to guard the Crown Jewels and the Queen’s House on behalf of the monarch. They can come from any branch of the armed forces of Britain and the Commonwealth.”
The text panel above was repeated in ten additional languages 

Hot on the Trail: we’re almost there. 

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Sucess. But this is all there was, a set of images including the equivalent of a power-point show. We found The Wellington Exhibition at the Tower completely underwhelming.

The White Tower

the line for the Crown Jewels

Tower Bridge

Where the poppies were just beginning to be placed

The White Tower

A distant view of the White Tower

The Traitor’s Gate

The wall along the Thames

The poppies from the west

Seeing the poppies was the highlight of the visit to the Tower. And we did negotiate the entire circumference of the place, up and down, in and out, ad nauseum, with a disappointing result. Actually, in retrospect it was pretty amusing to think of the long trek when we could have simply walked through the lawns and found the Wellington Barracks instead of going the long way around. And since Kristine is an expert on Wellington, and I am not so bad myself (says Victoria immodestly), what did we think we would learn?  I guess we were hoping for a tidbit of new materials. To no avail!

On the plus side, we got some exercise, some good shots of the Tower, and a very memorable view of those incredible poppies.

Next, we re-crossed London to Horse Guards in Whitehall for the Afternoon Ceremonies.

Horse Guards
The Horse Guards building, which served as the British Army’s headquarters for many years, was designed by William Kent (1685-1748) and built by John Vardy between 1750 and 1753.  It is a masterpiece of the Palladian style. The Duke of Wellington occupied offices here for a large part of his life.

Two mounted guards from the Household Cavalry are in place every day and a great attraction for the tourists along Whitehall.  Each afternoon, the Daily Inspection takes place at 4 pm.

Following the Inspection, we toured the Household Cavalry Museum, which opens onto the Parade Ground behind the building. Their Website is here.

By this time, we were ready for a return to the hotel for a rest before our special dinner at The Grenadier, which we will describe next week.

THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON TOUR: WE INVADE WELLINGTON ARCH

Across the crazy traffic circle in front of Apsley House, the Wellington Arch stands in isolated magnificence.  With some exceptions we will note further along.

To read what Victoria wrote about the history of the Wellington Arch last year, click here.

Looking through the arch toward Buckingham Palace
Our Guide Clive points out the Wellington statue nearby.
The doors bear the royal crest.
Decimus Burton, architect of the arch and the Hyde Park Screen across the street, also 
designed the iron doors, cast by Joseph Bramah & Sons of Pimlico. They are painted to resemble a bronze patina.

For information on the exhibitions at the Arch, go their website, click here.

We elevated to the top of the arch for the daily parade of guards and were excited at the view.  Took many  many pictures!

Through the screen and into the park beside Apsley House.

The Quadriga by Adrian Jones, finished 1912, replaced the monumental statue atop the Arch. The equestrian statue of the Duke had provoked considerable controversy, even ridicule, before it was dismantled and moved to its present location in Aldershot.
The monumental equestrian statue (8.5 metres high, aka 28 feet) overwhelmed the arch.
Completed in 1846, the statue was cast from 40 tons of bronze, mostly from melted down French cannons, at a cost of  £30,000. Though everyone was unhappy, it was raised on the arch, where it stood until the necessity for moving the location of the arch itself in the late 1880’s.
Gigantic size!
In its present position atop a hill in Aldershot, Hampshire, near the Military Museum, the statue has found a suitable home. The responsible artist was Matthew Coates Wyatt (1777-1862). It was restored in recent years.
Today on the grounds of the Arch.

Wellington Statue near the Arch, by Joseph Boehm, 1888


Apsley House from atop the Arch

Close up of the capital of the Corinthian Columns

Apsley House from the traffic circle

The Wellington Arch, illuminated during the celebration
 of the Battle of Waterloo Centenary, 2015

After a fond farewell to the Wellington Arch and its nearby statue of the Duke of Wellington, our tour group proceeded to the bus and our drive across London to the Tower.

WHAT WE SAW IN BRUSSELS IN JUNE, 2010

Victoria here, telling you about how Kristine and I began our visit to the Battlefield of Waterloo in June 2010. We took the Eurostar from London to Brussels, an easy trip. After we checked into the Hotel Bedford (note very British name), our bus took us to Evere Cemetery, where we walked to the British Waterloo Monument, a huge memorial set atop a crypt.

It was commissioned by Queen Victoria in 1870, said to be the “first to honor the dead of a campaign, as opposed to the many memorials that commemorate a victory.”  Seventeen officers remains are buried here. It was dedicated in 1890.
Col. Sir William Howe de Lancey  and Lt. Col. the Hon Sir Alexander Gordon, ADC to the Duke of Wellington, are the highest ranking men buried here.
The pictures above and below were taken in the fall, with fewer leafy trees in the way.
Above you can see the door leading into the crypt. This was reached via very steep steps leading down from the lawn surrounding the monument.
The monument was designed by Belgian sculptor Count J. De Lalaing, whose talent is obvious in the life-like representations of the lions guarding the tombs and the way the fabric seems to flow as it drapes the tomb.
The inscription reads: “In memory of the British officers non-commissioned officers and men who fell during the Waterloo Campaign in 1815 and whose remains were transferred to this cemetery in 1889. This monument is erected by Her Britannic Majesty Queen Victoria, Empress of India, and by their countrymen on a site generously presented by the City of Brussels.” 
In 1815, this park in the upper town in Brussels would have been full of British and Allied soldiers. In fact, it is the very park through which the diarist Creevey used to pursue the Duke of Wellington in hopes of gaining some news of the expected battle. Time and again, the Duke confounded Creevey with his nonchalance about upcoming events and his apparently carefree attitude, prompting Creevey to write that he thought the Duke must be either mad or drunk. It never occurred to Creevey that the Duke wouldn’t dare tell him anything, as Creevey was well kno
wn to be a gossip who simply couldn’t keep his mouth shut.
A few years later, in 1830, some of the fighting for Belgium’s  independence from the Netherlands took place here in this lovely park.
Above is what we saw of the Duke of Wellington’s Headquarters in Brussells which was undergoing renovations during our visit. We couldn’t get a clue as to what the building looked like — unless it was a twin of the building on the left.
The two above photos above show the City Hall in the Grand Place in Brussels. Below is an image from the web which show’s the building’s location within the Plaza.
The entire Grand Place is surrounded by elegant buildings and filled with strollers and tourists rubber-necking at their baroque splendor.

Although we visited the site of the Duchess of Richmond’s Ball, it now contains an ordinary office building and I didn’t even bother to take a picture. The painting above hangs at Goodwood House, country home of the Dukes of Richmond.

 Unfortunately, the modern world has obscured many of the features of the city from the 18th and early 19th centuries, but we were certainly thrilled to have stood in these places and to cast our minds’ eye back to what it must have been like in 1815.