After our delightful afternoon tea at the Ritz,( I recommend the 3.30 pm sitting rather than the 5.30 pm sitting, unless you intend to go straight from drinking Darjeeling tea to sipping cocktails), my Lady and I continued down Piccadilly to Hyde Park Corner, with its dramatic Ionic Screen by Decimus Burton (1825).
In the 18th century, when the famous Exeter Fly stage coach was the fastest transport to the West Country, London ended at this spot. Setting out on its weekly flight from the city at 5 o'clock in the morning from the Bull and Gate coaching inn at Aldersgate, The Exeter Fly jolted its way down a then rutted Piccadilly until it reached what is now Apsley House. The coachman alighted for a drink there at an inn called Hercules' Pillars which stood where Apsley House now stands. The travellers in the Exeter Fly of 1773 would have noticed the guard at the inn's doorway ostentatiously getting his blunderbuss under control and, fearfully putting themselves into a posture of defence, felt for their own pistols. For although the Knighstbridge that we now associate with Harvey Nichols and Harrods, smart fashion boutiques and expensive restaurants is but a short step away, it was then a place of sometimes impassable muddy bogs - and highwaymen intent on relieving stranded passengers of their purses.
Facing Burton's Screen, erected when the railway had displaced the stage coach and a new gentility had reached Knightsbridge, is his Victory Arch and the 5 star Lanesborough Hotel, converted from the old St. George's Hospital built in the last days of the reign of George IV.
The arch was commissioned by George IV to stand before Buckingham Palace as a celebration of Britain's victory over Napoleon at Waterloo. Before it was later moved to its present position at Hyde Park Corner, it was topped by a colossal equestrian statue of the Duke of Wellington, the emperor's victor. The statue was later removed to a more appropriately military venue at Aldershot the garrison town, and the arch moved to its present position. A chariot-born winged Angel put in its place in 1912 as a memorial to King Edward VII. The arch is now dramatically lit at night, the angel standing triumphant against the London sky.
Next to the Ionic Screen is the Duke of Wellington's Apsley House, its 1829 exterior another fine example of the Benjamin Wyatt's work. Apsley House was the Iron Duke's London residence and known as No 1 London. It is a treasure trove of fine china and silver donated to him by the thankful Royals of Europe, whose thrones he saved from Napoleon. If you have any energy left after completing the first part of the Diana Memorial Walk, pay a visit to Apsley House or to the Arch. Both are now museums.
