Horse Guards (building)

London District (LONDIST) is the name given by the British Army to the area of operations encompassing the Greater London area. It was established in 1870 as Home District.

The equestrian statue of the Earl Roberts is an outdoor sculpture of Frederick Roberts, 1st Earl Roberts by Harry Bates, installed at Horse Guards Parade in London, United Kingdom.

The equestrian statue of the Viscount Wolseley is an outdoor sculpture depicting Garnet Wolseley, 1st Viscount Wolseley, located at the Horse Guards Parade in London, United Kingdom. It is by Sir William Goscombe John and was unveiled by the Duke of Connaught in 1920. The front of the plinth contains an inscription which reads "Wolseley", while the back includes the inscription: "Field-Marshal Viscount Wolseley, KP, GCB, OM, GCMG, 1833–1913, Commander-in-Chief of the British Army, 1895–1900. / Burmah 1852–3 / Crimea 1854–5 / Indian Mutiny 1857–9 / China 1860–1 / Red River 1870 / Ashanti 1873–4 / South Africa 1879 / Egypt 1882 / Soudan 1884–5."

The Cádiz Memorial, also known as the "Prince Regent's Bomb", is an early 19th-century French mortar mounted on a brass monster, located in Horse Guards Parade in Westminster, London. It was first "exposed to public view" on 12 August 1816 and has been classified as a Grade II listed building since 1 December 1987. The monument was a feature of many satirical verses and cartoons in the early 19th century, mainly because the word "bomb" – pronounced "bum" – gave it an immediate association with the notoriously profligate Prince Regent's sizeable backside.

Dover House is a Grade I-listed mansion in Whitehall, and the London headquarters of the Scotland Office. The building also houses the Office of the Advocate General for Scotland and the Independent Commission for Aid Impact.

The equestrian statue of Prince George, Duke of Cambridge is a life-size memorial by Adrian Jones, installed in Whitehall, London.

Admiralty House in London is a Grade I listed building facing Whitehall, currently used for UK government functions and as ministerial flats. It was opened in 1788 and until 1964 was the official residence of the First Lord of the Admiralty.

The Holbein Gate was a monumental gateway across Whitehall in Westminster, constructed in 1531–32 in the English Gothic style. The Holbein Gate and a second less ornate gate, Westminster Gate, were constructed by Henry VIII to connect parts of the Tudor Palace of Whitehall to the east and west of the road. It was one of two substantial parts of the Palace of Whitehall to survive a catastrophic fire in January 1698, the other being Inigo Jones's classical Banqueting House. The Holbein Gate was described by Thomas Pennant as "the most beautiful gate at Whitehall". It was demolished in 1759.The name of Holbein Gate reflects a tradition that it was designed by Hans Holbein, although any connection with Holbein seems unlikely. It was also known as the King's Gate or the Cockpit Gate, being close to the Royal Cockpit. The Westminster Gate or Kings Street Gate further south was built in a simpler more classical style with circular corner towers and domed turrets, and was demolished in 1723. The Holbein Gate is shown in drawings and engravings, including an engraving made by George Vertue in 1725 and published in 1747 in Vol. I of Vetusta Monumenta. The gate was a rectangular building of three floors, with the principal rooms on the upper two floors. Projecting square bases on each corner supporting octagonal towers and turrets. A passageway between the towers approximately 12 feet (3.7 m) wide allowed traffic to pass beneath a flat archway, with one footway to the east and possibly a second footway to the west through the towers (although the west footway may have been blocked and then cleared). Above the arch was an oriel window with two row of six lights (one to either side and four in the centre) on the first floor, and a window of four lights in a double row on the first floor. The top of the tower was surmounted by a parapet with battlements. Each face of the octagonal towers had two-light windows in double rows. Both sides of the gate were faced with chequerboard patterns of flint and stone, and also decorative carved panels, including a royal coat of arms above the arch, gryphons holding shields, and other royal emblems, such as the portcullis, fleur-de-lys and Tudor rose. Roundels to either side of the large central windows held with busts, possibly by Giovanni da Maiano. (Three terracotta busts by Pietro Torrigiano owned by the Wright family in Hatfield Peverel until the 1920s were thought to come from the Gate, but later scholarship doubts any connection.) The arch was later filled in down to the springing, flattening its profile. A gallery to the west overlooked the Royal Tiltyard (now Horse Guards Parade) leading eventually to St James's Park. Another gallery led to the Cockpit. The upper storey was used as the Paper Office, from perhaps 1672 until 1756. The lower storey was used as lodgings. Residents included Duke of Lennox in around 1620, later General Lambert until 1657 and then Viscount Fauconberg. It was occupied by Lady Castlemaine from around 1664 to around 1670 and then by her daughter, the Countess of Sussex. William Van Huls, Clerk of the Queen's Robes and Wardrobes, was the occupant in 1712. Like the gate at Temple Bar on Fleet Street, the Holbein Gate obstructed the movement of traffic along the road below. Proposals for its demolition were put forward in the early part of the 18th century, but were successfully opposed by John Vanbrugh and others. The gate was left in place when the King Street Gate was demolished in 1723, but the filled-in segment of the arch was cleared to increase headroom for traffic passing below. The adjacent red brick Van Huls house (depicted by Canaletto in a painting of 1747 at Goodwood House) was acquired in March 1759, and the arch and the house were demolished in August 1759. There were plans for the Duke of Cumberland to rebuild the gate in Windsor Great Park, but in the end it seems that the materials were incorporated in repairs to other buildings.

Whitehall is a road and area in the City of Westminster, Central London. The road forms the first part of the A3212 road from Trafalgar Square to Chelsea. It is the main thoroughfare running south from Trafalgar Square towards Parliament Square. The street is recognised as the centre of the Government of the United Kingdom and is lined with numerous departments and ministries, including the Ministry of Defence, Horse Guards and the Cabinet Office. Consequently, the name 'Whitehall' is used as a metonym for the British civil service and government, and as the geographic name for the surrounding area. The name was taken from the Palace of Whitehall that was the residence of Kings Henry VIII through to William III, before its destruction by fire in 1698; only the Banqueting House has survived. Whitehall was originally a wide road that led to the front of the palace; the route to the south was widened in the 18th century following the destruction of the palace. As well as government buildings, the street is known for its memorial statues and monuments, including the UK's primary war memorial, the Cenotaph. South of the Cenotaph the thoroughfare becomes Parliament Street. The Whitehall Theatre (now the Trafalgar Studios) was formerly associated with a series of farces.

The Earl Haig Memorial is a bronze equestrian statue of the British Western Front commander Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig on Whitehall in Westminster, London. It was created by the sculptor Alfred Frank Hardiman and commissioned by Parliament in 1928. Eight years in the making, it aroused considerable controversy; the Field Marshal's riding position, his uniform, the horse's anatomy and its stance all drew harsh criticism. The inscription on the plinth reads 'Field Marshal Earl Haig Commander-in-Chief of the British Armies in France 1915–1918'.

The statue of the Duke of Devonshire is a Grade II-listed outdoor bronze sculpture of Spencer Cavendish, 8th Duke of Devonshire, the leader of three British political parties between 1875 and 1903, and is located at the entrance to Horse Guards Avenue, Whitehall, London, England. A work of the sculptor Herbert Hampton, it was unveiled in 1911.The statue is around 4 metres high and rests on a plinth around 5 metres high. The inscription on the plinth gives the Duke's name, title, honours (KG for Knight of the Garter; he is depicted wearing his Garter robes) and year of birth and death.A committee headed by the Marquess of Lansdowne secured permission for the statue's location and the sculptor's design was approved by Edward VII in 1909 and completed the following year. The Marquess of Lansdowne unveiled the statue on 11 February 1911.

The execution of Charles I by beheading occurred on Tuesday 30 January 1649 outside the Banqueting House on Whitehall. The execution was the culmination of political and military conflicts between the royalists and the parliamentarians in England during the English Civil War, leading to the capture and trial of Charles I. On Saturday 27 January 1649, the parliamentarian High Court of Justice had declared Charles guilty of attempting to "uphold in himself an unlimited and tyrannical power to rule according to his will, and to overthrow the rights and liberties of the people" and he was sentenced to death.Charles spent his last few days in St James's Palace, accompanied by his most loyal subjects and visited by his family. On 30 January, he was taken to a large black scaffold constructed in front of the Banqueting House, where he was to be executed. A large crowd had gathered to witness the regicide. Charles stepped onto the scaffold and gave his last speech, declaring his innocence of the crimes of which parliament had accused him, and claiming himself as a "martyr of the people". The crowd could not hear the speech, owing to the many parliamentarian guards blocking the scaffold, but Charles' companion, Bishop William Juxon, recorded it in shorthand. Charles gave a few last words to Juxon, claiming his "incorruptible crown" in Heaven, and put his head on the block. He waited a few moments and gave a signal; the anonymous executioner beheaded Charles in one clean blow and held Charles' head up to the crowd silently, dropping it into the swarm of soldiers soon after. The execution has been described as one of the most significant and controversial events in English history. Some view it as the martyrdom of an innocent man, with Restoration historian Edward Hyde describing "a year of reproach and infamy above all years which had passed before it; a year of the highest dissimulation and hypocrisy, of the deepest villainy and most bloody treasons that any nation was ever cursed with" and the Tory Isaac D'Israeli writing of Charles as "having received the axe with the same collectedness of thought and died with the majesty with which he had lived", dying a "civil and political" martyr to Britain. Still others view it as a vital step towards democracy in Britain, with the prosecutor of Charles I, John Cook, declaring that it "pronounced sentence not only against one tyrant but against tyranny itself" and Whig historian Samuel Rawson Gardiner, who wrote that "with Charles' death the main obstacle to the establishment of a constitutional system had been removed. [...] The monarchy, as Charles understood it, had disappeared forever".