1. CHARING CROSS AND TRAFALGAR SQUARE.
STATIONS: Trafalgar Square, on the Bakerloo Tube; Strand, on the Hampstead Tube; Charing Cross, on the District Railway and on the Bakerloo and Hampstead Tubes. Charing Cross Terminus of the Southern Railway. OMNIBUSES to and from every part of London.
Charing Cross, the irregular open space at the west end of the Strand and to the south of Trafalgar Square, may be regarded as the centre of London for the purposes of the tourist. Though 'the full tide of human existence' is no longer, as Dr. Johnson held, at Charing Cross, this is a busy and crowded traffic-centre, with converging and intersecting streams of vehicles that exact a considerable degree of caution from those crossing the roadway. Here in 1291 Edward I. erected the last of the series of thirteen crosses that marked the stages in the funeral procession of his wife Eleanor from Harby, in Nottinghamshire, to Westminster Abbey; but the derivation of Charing from 'chere reine' (dear queen) is a mere poetic conceit. Eleanor's Cross was removed in 1647, and is now represented by a handsome modern memorial cross erected within the station-yard of Charing Cross Terminus. Its site is occupied by an equestrian statue of Charles I., by Hubert Le Sueur, erected here in 1674, on the very spot where several of the regicides were executed and facing down Whitehall towards the scene of the king's death. This statue, originally cast in 1633 for Lord Weston (afterwards Earl of Portland) for his gardens at Roehampton, was never erected in the life of the King, and during the Commonwealth it was sold by Parliament to John Rivett, a brazier, who undertook to destroy it. Rivett drove a brisk traffic in mementoes of the royal martyr, alleged to be made from the metal of the statue, but at the Restoration the latter was found to be intact and was sold or presented to Charles II. The sculptured pedestal is by Joshua Marshall, after a design by Wren. On January 30th, the anniversary of the execution of Charles I., this statue is adorned with wreaths by adherents of the Jacobite tradition.
