Liberty of the Savoy

The Precinct of the Savoy, also known as Savoy St John the Baptist, was a component of the Liberty of the Savoy in the metropolitan area of London, England. It was located between the Strand and the River Thames. Formerly extra-parochial, it was a civil parish between 1866 and 1922. It now forms part of the City of Westminster in Greater London.

The Savoy Hotel is a luxury hotel located in the Strand in the City of Westminster in central London, England. Built by the impresario Richard D'Oyly Carte with profits from his Gilbert and Sullivan opera productions, it opened on 6 August 1889. It was the first in the Savoy group of hotels and restaurants owned by Carte's family for over a century. The Savoy was the first luxury hotel in Britain, introducing electric lights throughout the building, electric lifts, bathrooms in most of the lavishly furnished rooms, constant hot and cold running water and many other innovations. Carte hired César Ritz as manager and Auguste Escoffier as chef de cuisine; they established an unprecedented standard of quality in hotel service, entertainment and elegant dining, attracting royalty and other rich and powerful guests and diners. The hotel became Carte's most successful venture. Its bands, Savoy Orpheans and the Savoy Havana Band, became famous, and other entertainers (who were also often guests) included George Gershwin, Frank Sinatra, Lena Horne and Noël Coward. Other famous guests have included Edward VII, Oscar Wilde, Enrico Caruso, Charlie Chaplin, Babe Ruth, Harry Truman, Joan Crawford, Judy Garland, John Wayne, Laurence Olivier, Marilyn Monroe, Humphrey Bogart, Elizabeth Taylor, Barbra Streisand, Bob Dylan, Bette Midler, The Beatles and many others. Winston Churchill often took his cabinet to lunch at the hotel.The hotel is now managed by Fairmont Hotels and Resorts. It has been called "London's most famous hotel". It has 267 guest rooms and panoramic views of the River Thames across Savoy Place and the Thames Embankment. The hotel is a Grade II listed building.

A statue of Robert Raikes, often regarded as being the founder of Sunday schools, executed by the sculptor Thomas Brock, stands in Victoria Embankment Gardens, London, United Kingdom. It was unveiled by the Earl of Shaftesbury on 3 July 1880 and marked the centenary of the opening of the first Sunday school. The critic Edmund Gosse considered the statue to be "as good as anything of the kind we possess in England". In 1958 it was designated a Grade II-listed building.The front of the plinth reads: ROBERT RAIKES/ FOUNDER OF SUNDAY SCHOOLS/ 1780/ THIS STATUE WAS ERECTED/ UNDER THE DIRECTION/ OF THE SUNDAY SCHOOL UNION/ BY CONTRIBUTIONS/ FROM TEACHERS AND SCHOLARS/ OF SUNDAY SCHOOLS IN GREAT BRITAIN/ JULY 1880. An inscription below the figure's right foot reads: THOS BROCK SCULPT/ LONDON. 1880.In 1929 replicas of the statue were cast for erection the following year in Gloucester and Toronto, for the 150th anniversary the following year of opening of the first Sunday school.

The Memorial to Arthur Sullivan by William Goscombe John stands in Victoria Embankment Gardens in the centre of London. It was designated a Grade II listed structure in 1958.

The Henry Fawcett Memorial is a memorial fountain commemorating Henry Fawcett, installed during 1886 at the Victoria Embankment Gardens in London, United Kingdom. Mary Grant created the portrait relief and George Frampton produced the ornamental elements. Basil Champneys was the architect for the memorial. The Memorial is listed Grade II.

The Queen's Chapel of St John the Baptist in the Precinct of the Savoy, also known as the Queen's Chapel of the Savoy, is a church in the City of Westminster, London. Facing it are 111 Strand, the Savoy Hotel, the Institution of Engineering and Technology and – across the green to its side – the east side of Savoy Street. It is designated as a Grade II* listed building.The chapel sits on the site of the Savoy Palace, once owned by John of Gaunt, that was destroyed in the Peasants' Revolt of 1381. Gaunt's Duchy of Lancaster, the owner of the site of the palace, eventually came into the hands of the monarch. Work was begun on the chapel in 1502 under King Henry VII and it received its first charter to operate as a hospital foundation in 1512 to look after 100 poor and needy men of London. The hospital had fallen into ruin by the late 18th century; only the chapel survived the consequent demolition, which as to the hospital's eastern end was ceded for an approach to Waterloo Bridge. The chapel is owned by the Duchy of Lancaster and as such is a Royal Peculiar – outside the jurisdiction of a diocese, but under that of the reigning monarch. The church is the chapel of the Royal Victorian Order, whose full gathering takes place at St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, to accommodate those numbers.

The Savoy Palace, considered the grandest nobleman's townhouse of medieval London, was the residence of John of Gaunt until it was destroyed during rioting in the Peasants' Revolt of 1381. The palace was on the site of an estate given to Peter II, Count of Savoy in the early 1200s, which in the following century came to be controlled by Gaunt's family. It was situated between Strand and the River Thames – the Tudor era Savoy Chapel carries on the name, and the present day Savoy Theatre and Savoy Hotel were named in its memory. In the locality of the palace, the administration of law was by a special jurisdiction, separate from the rest of the county of Middlesex, known as the Liberty of the Savoy.

Savoy Place is a large red brick building on the north bank of the River Thames in London. It is on a street called Savoy Place; Savoy Hill and Savoy Street run along the sides of the building up to the Strand. In front is the Victoria Embankment, part of the Thames Embankment. Close by are Savoy Hill House (best known for accommodating the BBC Savoy Hill recording studios), the Savoy Hotel and Waterloo Bridge. There are commanding views over to the South Bank and the London Eye.

The Savoy Theatre is a West End theatre in the Strand in the City of Westminster, London, England. The theatre opened on 10 October 1881 and was built by Richard D'Oyly Carte on the site of the old Savoy Palace as a showcase for the popular series of comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan, which became known as the Savoy operas as a result. The theatre was the first public building in the world to be lit entirely by electricity. For many years, the Savoy Theatre was the home of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, which continued to be run by the Carte family for over a century. Richard's son Rupert D'Oyly Carte rebuilt and modernised the theatre in 1929, and it was rebuilt again in 1993 following a fire. It is a Grade II* listed building. In addition to The Mikado and other famous Gilbert and Sullivan premières, the theatre has hosted such premières as the first public performance in England of Oscar Wilde's Salome (1931) and Noël Coward's Blithe Spirit (1941). In recent years it has presented opera, Shakespeare and other non-musical plays, and musicals.

Decommissioned and removed in late 2019. The Savoy Pier was located just to the south of the Savoy Hotel on the river Thames, and not far from the site of the old Savoy Wharf. The pier was the first central London base of Woods River Cruises Ltd. The pier was designed by Beckett Rankine in 1998 as a temporary structure and is an unusual design being restrained by transverse radial arms and longitudinal mooring cables. The contractor was Downtown Marine Construction who have since ceased trading. It was replaced by new 140m mooring pontoon 'Woods Quay' in July 2020. It has been proposed that Savoy Pier will be relocated to Hammersmith Embankment for use for a new cross-river Thames Clipper service Scheduled river bus services operated from Savoy Pier from April 2004, to November 2008 when they were transferred to Embankment Pier, a short distance up the Thames.

The Anglo-Belgian Memorial, also known as the Belgian Gratitude Memorial or the Belgian Refugees Memorial, is a war memorial on Victoria Embankment in London, opposite Cleopatra's Needle. It was a gift from Belgium, as a mark of thanks for assistance given by the UK during the First World War, and in particular for sheltering thousands of Belgian refugees who fled from the war. It is a Grade II* listed building. Plans for a Belgian war memorial in London were proposed by a group of Belgians in 1916, to be funded by public subscription. The memorial was designed by Sir Reginald Blomfield. Its main feature is a central bronze sculpture by Belgian sculptor Victor Rousseau, who himself spent time as a refugee in London during the war. The sculpture was cast by A.B. Burton at the Thames Ditton Foundry. It depicts a Belgian woman, accompanied by a boy and a girl carrying garlands of flowers. The bronze stands on a stone plinth which bears the inscription, "To the British nation from the grateful people of Belgium, 1914–1918". The central group is sheltered by a curved screen wall of Portland stone, which bears two further relief sculptures (now quite worn) representing "Justice" (left) and "Honour" (right). The wall also bears carved wreaths and nine heraldic shields, representing the provinces of Belgium: Brabant, Antwerp, Liège, Hainault, Namur, Limburg, Luxembourg, East Flanders and West Flanders. Vandals damaged the memorial in July 1920, while it was under construction, and for a time it was guarded by a nightwatchman. It was unveiled by Princess Clémentine of Belgium at a ceremony on 12 October 1920, the fifth anniversary of the execution of British nurse Edith Cavell in Brussels. The ceremony was attended by the Prime Minister of Belgium Leon Delacroix, and the gift was formally accepted on behalf of the British nation by Lord Curzon. In response, an Anglo-Belgian Memorial was erected in Brussels in 1923, designed by British sculptor Charles Sargeant Jagger. The memorial became a Grade II listed building in 1970, and was upgraded to Grade II* in 2014.

Simpson's-in-the-Strand is one of London's oldest traditional English restaurants. Situated in the Strand, it is part of the Savoy Buildings, which also contain one of the world's most famous hotels, the Savoy. After a modest start in 1828 as a smoking room and soon afterwards as a coffee house, Simpson's achieved a dual fame, around 1850, for its traditional English food, particularly roast meats, and also as the most important venue in Britain for chess in the nineteenth century. Chess ceased to be a feature after Simpson's was bought by the Savoy Hotel group of companies at the end of the century, but as a purveyor of traditional English food, Simpson's has remained a celebrated dining venue throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. P.G. Wodehouse called it "a restful temple of food".Since 2005, Simpson's has been run by Fairmont Hotels and Resorts.