The Bandstand — London's Most Macabre Lawn
The Bandstand in Lincoln's Inn Fields, London, features an 1897 brass plaque commemorating the 1683 execution of Whig politician William Lord Russell, though historians dispute whether the scaffold stood on the exact site. Russell was beheaded on July 21, 1683, after being convicted in the Rye House Plot against King Charles II. It took notorious executioner Jack Ketch four axe blows to complete the execution.
London · from the walk “Secrets of Lincoln's Inn Fields” · audio ~4 min · Generated
Lincoln's Inn Fields Bandstand, Lincoln's Inn Fields, London WC2A 3ED
- On July 21, 1683, Whig politician William Lord Russell was executed at Lincoln's Inn Fields for the Rye House Plot.
- Notorious executioner Jack Ketch required four axe blows to execute William Lord Russell despite receiving a ten-guinea payment.
- In 1586, Anthony Babington and 13 Catholic conspirators were executed in Lincoln's Inn Fields for plotting against Queen Elizabeth.
- The London County Council installed a memorial brass plaque inside the Lincoln's Inn Fields Bandstand floor in 1897.
Who is commemorated on the brass plaque inside the Lincoln's Inn Fields Bandstand?
Look around you. Office workers eating sandwiches on the grass... joggers circling the paths... children playing. This is Lincoln's Inn Fields, London's largest public square. It looks perfectly peaceful. But if you glance down at the floor of this bandstand... you will find a small brass plaque. And that plaque tells a very different story.......... It reads: "Near this spot was beheaded William Lord Russell, a lover of constitutional liberty, twenty one July, sixteen eighty three."
...... Lord Russell was a Whig politician, the son of the first Duke of Bedford, and he opposed the idea of a Catholic king sitting on the English throne. He was accused of plotting to ambush King Charles the Second on his way back from the Newmarket races... the scheme known as the Rye House Plot. Russell refused to flee to Holland like his fellow conspirators. He stood trial... and was sentenced to die.......... On that July morning, he was brought here through Little Queen Street. Crowds packed the fields. He walked the scaffold four or five times, handed his papers to the sheriffs, and knelt. The executioner was a man named Jack Ketch... already notorious for his clumsiness. Russell had Paid him ten guineas for a clean, swift end. But Ketch struck once... and Russell was still alive. Can you imagine? He reportedly looked up at his executioner and said: "You dog, did I give you ten guineas to use me so inhumanely?" It took Four blows of the axe before it was done. Ketch was so embarrassed he later published a written apology, blaming Russell himself for not positioning his neck properly!......... But this was not the first blood spilled here. Nearly a century earlier, in fifteen eighty six, Anthony Babington and thirteen Catholic conspirators were dragged on hurdles from the Tower to these very fields... then called Cup Field. They were hanged, drawn, and quartered for plotting to assassinate Queen Elizabeth and free Mary Queen of Scots. The first seven died so horribly that the crowd was sickened. Even the Queen herself ordered that the second group be allowed to hang until dead before the butchery began.......... And here is what most people never notice. In eighteen ninety seven, the Lincoln County Council placed a brass tablet in the floor of the shelter that once stood here, claiming to mark the Exact spot of Russell's death. But historians later argued this was almost certainly wrong... the execution likely took place on a different part of the fields entirely! So the memorial you see today commemorates a spot that may have nothing to do with where the axe actually fell.......... Today, lawyers from the nearby Inns of Court eat their lunch where the scaffold once stood. Sometimes history hides in plain sight... right beneath your feet.
Unlocked for everyone by someone who walked here