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London District (British Army)

1905 establishments in EnglandBritish ArmyDistricts of the British ArmyEngvarB from May 2018Military units and formations established in 1905
Military units and formations in London

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.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article London District (British Army) (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors).

London District (British Army)
Horse Guards Parade, London Covent Garden

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N 51.5046 ° E -0.1272 °
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Horse Guards

Horse Guards Parade
SW1A 2AX London, Covent Garden
England, United Kingdom
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Holbein Gate
Holbein Gate

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.

Execution of Charles I
Execution of Charles I

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".