View of Trafalgar Square, City of Westminster, looking southwest towards Cockspur Street. The square is thronged with people. 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. A man in a mackintosh stands by the granite lip of one of the fountains, which were remodelled in 1939 to the designs of Sir Edwin Lutyens with sculpture by Sir Charles Wheeler and W. McMillan. The north terrace is balustraded and stone bollards enclose the open space of the square. These features are Grade II* listed, number 1066235. Between the fountains is 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. In the southwest corner of the square is a statue of General Sir Charles Napier, cast in bronze in 1855 by G. G. Adams on a granite pedestal. An officer in the British Army's Peninsular and 1812 campaigns, and later a Major General of the Bombay Army, during which period he led the military conquest of Sindh, before serving as the Governor of Sindh, and Commander-in-Chief in India. The statue was raised by subscription from private soldiers who had served under Napier in India. It is Grade II* listed, number 1357304. On the western side of the square is Canada House, built 1824-27 by Sir Robert Smirke as premises for The Royal College of Physicians and The Union Club. They were altered into Canada House in 1925 by Septimus Warwick. At the south-west side of the square, on the corner with Cockspur Street, number 34 Cockspur Street is a corner building with a clock on the corner and a replica of the Time Ball on top of the Royal Observatory at Greenwich. This was Dent and Dent Limited, a watch and clockmakers established in 1814 by Edward J. Dent. They manufactured the Standard Clock at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich which was to keep “Greenwich Mean Time”, the time to which all others in the Empire were referred (better known today as G.M.T.) and continued to do so until replaced by an electronic clock in 1946. Dent also made probably the most famous clock in the world - the Great Clock for the Houses of Parliament, known as Big Ben. They also manufactured a clock for the Crystal Palace and, when this was dismantled, it was erected at King’s Cross Station where it remains. In the foreground, a man is wheeling a wheelbarrow.
