Rooftop view of Trafalgar Square, City of Westminster, looking east. Trafalgar Square was planned as part of the redevelopment of the West Strand Improvements by John Nash following the passing of the Charing Cross Act of 1826. Although it was to be another 30 years before the square was completed, it occupies the area of the former Great Mews of the Crown Stables. Charles Barry was the architect, although he opposed the decision to erect Nelson's Column on the site - he was overruled. The whole square is Grade I listed, number 1001362. Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson's memorial column and sculpture was built 1839-1842, to the design of William Railton with a fluted granite column and Corinthian capital. The statue was by E. H. Baily and the bas-relief panels around the base depicting Nelson's famous naval battles by J. E. Carew, J. Ternouth, M. L. Watson and W. F. Woodington. The four lions by Sir Edwin Landseer were cast by Baron Marochetti and added 1867. The monument is Grade I listed, number 1276052. The two fountains, square with large apses to each side. Several people are sitting on the granite retaining walls. The fountains were remodelled in 1939 to the designs of Sir Edwin Lutyens. Between the fountains is a plinth with a bronze statue of General Charles George Gordon by Hamo Thornycroft. Gordon was lauded as a British war hero after his death at the end of the Siege of Khartoum in January 1885. Unveiled in Trafalgar Square on 16 October 1888 it was moved from Trafalgar Square in 1943 to the grounds of Mentmore Towers in Buckinghamshire. In a speech in the House of Commons on 5 May 1948, Winston Churchill (then Leader of the Opposition) advocated a return of the statue to its original location. It was restored in 1953 on the Victoria Embankment. The north terrace is balustraded. and below sit people on benches. Stone bollards enclose the open space of the square. These features are Grade II* listed, number 1066235. In the northwest corner of the square an empty plinth. It was originally intended for an equestrian statue of William IV, but insufficient funds were raised so it remained bare for 150 years. Since 1998, the Fourth Plinth Project (now Commission), commissioned modern art works to occupy the plinth on a temporary basis. In the northeast corner is a plinth with a statue of George IV on horseback by Sir Francis Chantrey and T. Earle. A bronze statue cast in 1829 for the Marble Arch in its original setting as the entrance to Buckingham Palace and moved to this site in 1843. It is Grade II* listed, number 1275350. On a plinth in the southeast corner is a statue of General Sir Henry Havelock, cast in bronze in 1861 by W. Behnes. Havelock was a British general who is associated with India and his recapture of Cawnpore during the 1857 First Indian War of Independence (Sepoy Mutiny). It is Grade II* listed, number 1217599. On the eastern side of the square is Morley's Hotel. Designed by the architect George Ledwell Taylor and originally developed as apartments, it was built by Atkinson Morley in 1831. In 1850 Peter Cunningham, in his ‘Hand-Book of London’, described it as "well-frequented, and is good of its kind". Sir Arthur Conan Doyle stayed there for some time in 1900, while he was writing The Hound of the Baskervilles, and the fictional Northumberland Hotel of that book may well have been based on Morley's. It was demolished in 1936 and replaced with South Africa House. On the northeast corner of the square and St Martin's Place, the church of St Martin-in-the-Fields. The earliest reference to the church is from 1222, and Henry VIII rebuilt the church in 1542 to keep plague victims in the area from having to pass through his Palace of Whitehall. By 1710 the walls and roof were in a state of decay, and in 1720, Parliament passed an act for the rebuilding of the church allowing for a sum of up to £22,000, to be raised by a rate on the parishioners. The current church was built 1722-26 to a neoclassical design by James Gibbs in Portland Stone with a staged tower and steeple rising above a Classical Corinthian portico. It is Grade I listed, number 1217661. On the northern side of the square is The National Gallery. Built 1832-38 by William Wilkins, to house The Angerstein Collection of paintings purchased by the government for The Royal Academy. The central Corinthian portico is raised on a podium wall with flanking steps and set back behind the portico pediment is a stone cupola dome. The secondary Corinthian porticoes have parapets raised over a central bay. The terminal pavilions have pairs of giant pilasters surmounted by small octagonal stone cupolas with pierced work openings. It is Grade I listed, number 1066236. At the southeast corner of the square, on the corner of Charing Cross and Northumberland Avenue, is The Grand Hotel built on the site of Northumberland House. Designed by F. & H. Francis and James Ebenezer Saunders and built between 1882 and 1887, the hotel had seven floors, 500 rooms, a large ballroom and was decorated with Antonio Salviati mosaics. The building was taken over by the British government in World War I to house military officers, and in the 1930s it became a retail headquarters. By 1972, not only had the stone facade weathered, but the whole building was damaged by the new Jubilee Underground line. It was demolished in 1986 and replaced with the similarly styled Grand Buildings designed by the Sidell Gibson Partnership. Originally built on the site of Northampton House which had been built in 1605 by Henry Howard 1st Earl of Northampton on the site of a former nunnery. It was sold to the Earl of Northumberland in the 1640s when it became Northumberland House. Although no longer a fashionable address in the nineteenth century, the Duke of Northumberland of the day was reluctant to leave his ancestral home, despite pressure from the Metropolitan Board of Works, which wished to build a road through the site to connect to the new roads along the Embankment, now Northumberland Avenue. After a fire, which caused substantial damage, the Duke accepted an offer of £500 000 and the building was demolished in 1874. On the corner of Northumberland Avenue and Charing Cross (now the northern end of Whitehall) is Trafalgar House, built in the 1870s.