Temple Bar (London)
Temple Bar is a boundary point that marks the westernmost extension of the City of London on the road to Westminster , where Fleet Street becomes the beach . Until 1878 this border was marked by a stone gate. Since then there has been a pillar in the middle of the street.
In the Middle Ages , the Corporation of London's sphere of influence extended in many places beyond the old city walls. In order to control trade, barriers were erected on the main roads wherever the city limits were significantly removed from an old city gate. Temple Bar was the most famous of these barriers, as traffic flowed through it between England's main trading center (London) and its political center (Westminster). The name comes from the Temple to the south, a district that formerly belonged to the Knights Templar and is now home to two of the four Inns of Court .
It is an old custom for the British monarch to stop at Temple Bar before entering the City of London so that the Lord Mayor can present him with a beaded sword as a sign of loyalty. This picturesque ceremony has often been described in art and literature. The widespread view that the monarch requires the permission of the Lord Mayor to enter the City is wrong.
Today Temple Bar is marked by a stone pillar in the middle of the street, which is crowned by a statue of a dragon (also called griffin , also known as "griffin"). The dragon comes from the city's coat of arms , which is framed by two dragons.
The construction
The first Temple Bar was probably nothing more than a barrier . There was a kind of gate since 1293, which was badly damaged in the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 .
In the late Middle Ages there was a wooden archway with a prison over it. After it was badly damaged in the " Great Fire of London " in 1666 , a new building was necessary. Charles II commissioned Sir Christopher Wren , who built an archway made of Portland stone between 1669 and 1672 . During the 18th century, the severed heads of traitors were impaled on the roof of the gateway.
The seven other major gates of London ( Aldgate , Aldersgate , Bishopsgate , Cripplegate , Ludgate , Moorgate and Newgate ) had all been demolished by 1800, but Temple Bar continued to be a barrier to the ever-increasing traffic. The Corporation of London wanted to widen the street, but was reluctant to destroy a structure of such historical importance. In 1878, Wren's archway was dismantled piece by piece within eleven days and the 2,700 stones were carefully stored.
In 1880 the brewer Sir Henry Meux bought the stones at the insistence of his wife and rebuilt the arch as the gateway to his home, Theobalds Park, in Hertfordshire .
There the arch stood in a forest clearing until 2003. In 1984 the Temple Bar Trust bought the building from the Meux Trust for one pound. It was then carefully dismantled and taken to the City of London on 500 pallets, where it was carefully repositioned at the entrance to the Paternoster Square redevelopment area north of St Paul's Cathedral . It was opened to the public in late 2004.
See also
- Pomerium , the ceremonial city limits inside ancient Rome
Web links
Coordinates: 51 ° 30 ′ 49 ″ N , 0 ° 6 ′ 43 ″ W.