The Tyburn Stone: Where 50,000 Met Their End

Look at the spot beneath your feet. Right here, embedded in this traffic island amid the roar of taxis and buses, there's a small circular plaque most people never notice. It would be easy to pass by this unassuming traffic island near Marble Arch and never know the morbid history of this very spot.

London · from the walk “The People's Park: Secrets & Untold Stories of Hyde Park”

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Tyburn Stone plaque, Marble Arch traffic island, London W1H 7EJ

Look at the spot beneath your feet. Right here, embedded in this traffic island amid the roar of taxis and buses, there's a small circular plaque most people never notice. It would be easy to pass by this unassuming traffic island near Marble Arch and never know the morbid history of this very spot... a small stone marker in the pavement is the only reminder of what happened here.

This... is Tyburn. And for nearly six hundred years, this was the place where London killed its condemned.

Tyburn's first recorded execution took place in eleven ninety-six, when William Fitzosbert — known as "William with the Beard" — was hanged here for sedition. He was dragged through the streets, his hands tied behind him, pulled by horse all the way to these gallows. But it was what came in fifteen seventy-one that made this spot truly infamous. A massive triangular wooden frame was erected here — three legs, three beams — known as the "Triple Tree" or the "Three-Legged Mare." On the twenty-third of June, sixteen forty-nine, twenty-four prisoners — twenty-three men and one woman — were hanged simultaneously, conveyed here in eight carts.

But who came to watch? Everyone. Executions were advertised days in advance and treated almost like public holidays. Workers and apprentices were given the day off, and tickets were sold for raised seats to watch the hanging. Among the crowds wandered gang members, muggers, and pickpockets — ironically, the place that hanged petty criminals became a hotbed of petty crime.

And the journey here was a spectacle all its own. Despite being just three miles from Newgate Prison, the procession to Tyburn usually took about three hours, thanks to crowds blocking every street. The procession would stop at an inn along the way — usually the Bowl Inn at Saint Giles — where the condemned was allowed to drink wine or strong liquor. It was not uncommon for prisoners to arrive at the scaffold drunk and disorderly.

Now here's a story that will stop you cold. On the thirtieth of January, sixteen sixty-one — the anniversary of the execution of King Charles the First — three shrouded bodies in open coffins were dragged on a sledge through the streets of London to these very gallows. One of them was Oliver Cromwell, the former Lord Protector of England. He had been Dead for nearly three years. King Charles the Second ordered Cromwell's body exhumed from Westminster Abbey for a posthumous execution. The three bodies were left hanging from morning till four in the afternoon before being cut down and beheaded. Their heads were placed on twenty-foot poles and displayed on the roof of Westminster Hall. Cromwell's head remained there until at least sixteen eighty-four.

Some say that over fifty thousand persons met their death at Tyburn during the six centuries it was a place of execution. The last execution here was that of robber John Austin in seventeen eighty-three.

And here's the twist that connects this grim spot to something you may have already passed on your walk. When the condemned finally reached these gallows, they were allowed to speak to the crowd — and those speeches were often directed right at the heart of the state. Speakers' Corner evolved from these speeches — attempts to explain, justify, or simply give meaning to a life. That's right... London's most celebrated symbol of free speech, just a stone's throw from here in Hyde Park, was born from the last words of the dying.

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