Nelson’s Column: A Trafalgar Memorial in London
Site at a Glance
- Popularity
- Very High
- Country
- United Kingdom
- Primary era
- Modern
- Eras represented
- Modern
- Civilizations
- British
- Site type
- Civic
- Remains
- Monument
On this page8 sections
History
Nelson’s Column stands in Trafalgar Square in London, United Kingdom, and commemorates Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson’s victory over the combined French and Spanish fleets at the Battle of Trafalgar. Nelson, a British Royal Navy admiral, was killed by a French sniper during the battle. Construction of the 19th-century memorial began in 1840, and it was completed and opened in 1843.
Planning and construction
In February 1838, 121 peers, Members of Parliament, and other members of the gentry formed a committee to raise money for a memorial through public subscriptions. The government allocated a site in Trafalgar Square, in front of the newly completed National Gallery. A design competition set an estimated budget of £20,000 to £30,000 and required entries by 31 January 1839.
A committee chaired by the Duke of Wellington chose architect William Railton’s proposal. After criticism prompted a second competition, Railton won again with a revised plan, on the condition that sculptor Edward Hodges Baily would make the statue. Baily’s own second-place design had proposed an obelisk surrounded by sculptures. Concerns about stability led to a reduction in the planned height, and granite was chosen instead of the originally proposed Craigleith sandstone.
Excavation for the brick foundations was under way by July 1840. Charles Davison Scott, the committee’s honorary secretary and the son of Nelson’s secretary, laid the first stone on 30 September that year. Contractors Grissell and Peto completed the stonework ready for the statue in November 1843. The monument’s reported cost was £47,000.
Funding and completion
The memorial committee had raised £20,485 in subscriptions when it ran out of money in 1844. The government then took over the project through the Office of Woods and Forests, the government department responsible for Crown lands and forests. Work to install the bronze relief panels began in late 1849. A fraud case delayed the final panel after iron was found mixed into its bronze. The company’s partners were jailed, and Robinson and Cottam completed the panel, which was installed in May 1854.
Plans for the lions also changed. John Graham Lough declined an initial commission in 1846, and four full-size sandstone lions by Thomas Milnes, each representing an ideal of Peace, War, Vigilance, or Determination, were rejected. Sir Titus Salt later bought Milnes’s sculptures for a civic building in his workers’ village, where they were installed in 1869. The lions at the column were instead designed by Edwin Landseer with Carlo Marochetti and installed in 1867. Their design may have drawn on the lions of Budapest’s Széchenyi Chain Bridge. Landseer sketched lions at London Zoo and later worked from a lion’s corpse; its decay contributed to anatomical inconsistencies in the sculptures.
Conservation and protection
Nelson’s Column has been a Grade I listed building since 1970, England’s highest category of listed-building protection. Renovation and sandblasting took place in 1968. During refurbishment in 2006, steam cleaning and gentle abrasives were used to limit damage to the stone and bronze. Laser surveys found the monument to be 14 feet 6 inches (4.42 m) shorter than its previously quoted height. In 2011, Greater London Authority consultants reported damage from people climbing on the lions’ backs and recommended prohibiting the practice.
Remains
The monument combines a granite column and statue with a sculpted pedestal and four bronze lions. Flights of steps lead between the lions toward the pedestal, around which the relief panels are set.
Granite column and statue
The monument measures 169 feet 3 inches (51.59 m) from the bottom of the pedestal to the top of Nelson’s hat, or about 51.5 m from the bottom of the first step to the hat. Its fluted shaft, marked by vertical grooves, is 98 feet (30 m) tall and consists of solid blocks of Dartmoor granite from the Foggintor quarries. Above it is a Corinthian capital, the decorated top of a classical column. Charles Harriott Smith modelled the capital on Rome’s Temple of Mars Ultor, named for Mars, the Roman god of war. Bronze components fit into grooves in the stone and are held by three large metal bands; some of the bronze pieces weigh as much as 900 pounds (410 kg). The components were cast at Woolwich Arsenal from cannon salvaged from the wreck of HMS Royal George. Nelson’s statue, about 17 feet (5.2 m) tall, was carved by Baily from three pieces of Craigleith sandstone.
Pedestal panels
Four bronze reliefs, each about 18 feet (5.5 m) square, decorate the pedestal. A relief is a sculpture whose figures project from a background surface. Cast from captured French guns, the panels show the Battle of Cape St. Vincent on the west side, the Battle of the Nile on the north, the Battle of Copenhagen on the east, and Nelson’s death at Trafalgar on the south. Musgrave Watson sculpted the Cape St. Vincent panel, William F. Woodington the Nile panel, John Ternouth the Copenhagen panel, and John Edward Carew the scene of Nelson’s death.
Bronze lions
Four matching bronze Barbary lions, a population historically native to North Africa, stand around the base. Their sculpted paws were based on those of a cat, and their backs curve inward rather than outward.
