Explore London - Marble Arch - A City Landmark

A beautiful monument without any practical function.

Apr 21, 2007

Marble Arch is a well-known London landmark which stands on a dark, distressing part of the capital's history. The gallows were here for nearly four hundred years.

Marble Arch seems rather forlorn and, impressive as it is, it has no practical purpose. It was originally situated outside Buckingham Palace but is said to have been too narrow for the royal coach to pass through. There is a question here, as the royal coach used for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II drove through the arch. However, the the average Londoner will never have an opportunity to pass through its portals - this dubious pleasure is reserved for the royal family and the King’s Troop Royal Artillery.

London Sights - Marble Arch - Architect John Nash

It was designed by John Nash, the Regency architect whose elegant 18th-century buildings changed the face of London. He based the design of Marble Arch on the triumphal Arch of Constantine in Rome and was decorated with fine sculptures which ended up elsewhere. The statue of its patron, King George IV, should be sitting on top of the arch but it was carted off to it’s present home in Trafalgar Square.

The real claim to fame of this part of London, however, does not belong to Marble Arch but to Tyburn, where simple wooden gallows claimed the lives of 50,000 people. This place of execution was situated close to where the Arch now stands by from the 14th-century until it’s removal to a new patch outside Newgate Prison in 1783. Until then the condemned prisoners were trundled from Newgate in open tumdrils to be hanged. Nooses were tied around their necks, a slap given to the horse that pulled the tumbril and they were left to dangle in the air.

This unhappy journey, from Newgate to the gallows at Tyburn, gave rise to a couple of popular phrases which are still in use today. “one for the road” referred to the practice of allowing the condemned to have one last drink at any ale-house en-route. The guards who were minding the prisoners in the carts were not allowed to drink, and the saying “on the wagon” also was born.

Hanging days were public holidays. Huge crowds lined the route and jostled for space at Tyburn to watch the unfortunate victims meet their awful fate. The rich sat in expensive grandstand seats and people who were ill pressed forward to touch the dead bodies.

It was believed that the body of a hanged man contained magical properties and while it was still hanging on the gibbet the hands were sometimes cut off. Often this act had a mercenary aspect to it as the hands were sometimes sold on the house-thieves who believed that people would remain sleeping as long as the candles placed in the dead fingers burned.

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