Parliament Square - Monuments

Monuments

The square is home to ten statues, mostly of well-known statesmen:

  • Winston Churchill (1874-1965): Prime Minister 1940-1945 and 1951-1955 (statue on north-eastern edge of the green, facing east toward parliament)
  • David Lloyd George (1863-1945): Prime Minister 1916-1922 (statue on northern edge of the green, facing south)
  • Jan Christiaan Smuts (1870-1950): Prime Minister of South Africa 1919-1924 and 1939-1948 (statue on northern edge of the green)
  • Lord Palmerston (1784-1865): Prime Minister 1855-58 and 1859-65 (statue on north-western edge of the green)
  • Lord Stanley, Earl of Derby (1799-1869): Prime Minister 1852, 1858-1859 and 1866-1868 (statue on north-western edge of the green)
  • Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield (1804-1881): Prime Minister 1868 and 1874-1880 (statue on western edge of the green, facing east)
  • Robert Peel (1788-1850): Prime Minister 1834-1835 and 1841-1846 (statue on western edge of the green)
  • Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865): President of the United States 1861-1865 (statue in front of Middlesex Guildhall)
  • George Canning (1770-1827): Foreign Secretary 1807-1809 and 1822-1827 and Prime Minister 1827 (statue at the square's junction with Great George Street)
  • Nelson Mandela (b. 1918): President of South Africa 1994-1999 (statue on the south-western edge of the green)

The 9-foot-high (2.7 m) bronze statue of Nelson Mandela was erected in the square in 2007, Westminster City Council having objected to it being built in Trafalgar Square due to space considerations. It was unveiled on 29 August 2007 by Prime Minister Gordon Brown in the presence of Wendy Woods, the widow of Donald Woods, a late anti-apartheid campaigner, and the British actor, director and long-time friend of Woods, Richard Attenborough.

  • Winston Churchill

  • David Lloyd George

  • Jan Christiaan Smuts

  • Lord Palmerston

  • Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield

  • Lord Stanley, Earl of Derby

  • Robert Peel

  • Abraham Lincoln

  • George Canning

  • Nelson Mandela

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Famous quotes containing the word monuments:

    If the Revolution has the right to destroy bridges and art monuments whenever necessary, it will stop still less from laying its hand on any tendency in art which, no matter how great its achievement in form, threatens to disintegrate the revolutionary environment or to arouse the internal forces of the Revolution, that is, the proletariat, the peasantry and the intelligentsia, to a hostile opposition to one another. Our standard is, clearly, political, imperative and intolerant.
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