Marble Arch: A Monument That Never Served Its Purpose

Take a look at this gleaming white monument, stranded on its traffic island like a grand aristocrat who showed up to the wrong party. This is Marble Arch... and its story is one of spectacular rejection.

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

Open the walk

Marble Arch, Cumberland Gate, London W1H 7EJ

Take a look at this gleaming white monument, stranded on its traffic island like a grand aristocrat who showed up to the wrong party. This is Marble Arch... and its story is one of spectacular rejection.

The iconic arch was designed by architect John Nash as a triumphal arch for Buckingham Palace to celebrate British victory in the Napoleonic Wars. Nash designed a remarkably ornate archway inspired by the Arch of Constantine in Rome and the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. The year was eighteen twenty-seven, and King George the Fourth wanted London to feel like the new Rome.

But here's the twist. After the death of King George the Fourth in eighteen thirty, Nash was sacked by the Prime Minister, the Duke of Wellington, for overspending on the project. The architect Edward Blore was commissioned to complete the works in less grandiose fashion. Blore found himself with a collection of statues and panels, but decided to complete the Arch without using most of the sculpture. So what you see today is... the budget version.

Marble Arch stood as a formal gateway to Buckingham Palace for seventeen years, but it was overshadowed by Blore's enlarged Palace and seen as unsatisfactory. Then Queen Victoria needed more room. In eighteen fifty the decision was taken to move the Arch to Cumberland Gate where it would form a grand entrance to Hyde Park in time for the Great Exhibition of eighteen fifty-one. The stone-by-stone removal was overseen by architect Thomas Cubitt, who completed the entire process in just three months.

Now, there's a popular myth that the arch was moved because Queen Victoria's state coach was too wide to fit through it. In fact, Queen Victoria's coronation procession passed easily through the Arch on its way to Westminster Abbey in eighteen thirty-eight, and Queen Elizabeth the Second's coronation procession also traveled with ease through the Arch in nineteen fifty-three.

But the Best hidden story? Look carefully at the arch and you might spot a small, discreet door. Inside, there are three tiny rooms that most people never suspect exist. When the Arch was being rebuilt, architect Thomas Cubitt was instructed to convert the interior spaces to living rooms. In eighteen fifty-one the building was made available to the police force. The Chief Commissioner thought the rooms would afford accommodation for six single men, while in times of commotion, the Arch would admit a considerable body of Police being assembled at this important point. It was never a fully functioning police station — not a place to report crimes, or a building with holding cells or interview rooms. But officers Did live and work inside this marble monument for over a century.

And one of those officers? Samuel Parkes, who became the Inspector of the Park Constables in Hyde Park, and at one time worked out of the constables' station inside Marble Arch. Private Samuel Parkes had been awarded the Victoria Cross after the British cavalry charge against Russian forces during the Crimean War in eighteen fifty-four. After his horse was killed, Parkes tackled two Russians attacking a defenseless trumpet major, then fought off six More men so he and the major could escape. A genuine war hero... stationed inside a hollow marble archway.

And the ground beneath your feet holds an even darker secret. Tyburn, near Marble Arch, was the site of the King's Gallows from eleven ninety-six to seventeen eighty-three. The Tyburn Tree was a form of gallows consisting of a horizontal wooden triangle supported by three legs. Multiple criminals could be hanged at once — on the twenty-third of June, sixteen forty-nine, Twenty-Four prisoners were hanged simultaneously. Some say that over fifty thousand persons met their death at Tyburn during those six centuries.

Hanging days were public holidays, and the large crowds were there for the spectacle... and for the dramatic speeches that preceded the hangings. It's these speeches that led to the tradition of public speaking and eventually Speaker's Corner being established near this site. So the free speech tradition just a stone's throw away? It was literally born from the last words of the condemned.

A triumphal arch that was never quite triumphant enough... hiding a secret police post, staffed by a Crimean War hero... standing on the bones of fifty thousand souls. Marble Arch is proof that in London, even the things that look purely decorative have stories layered centuries deep.

Nearby stories