London - Whitehall - Old Admiralty

This is an excerpt from the tour Whitehall  found on   www.obelisktours.co.uk

On the other side of the street are Trafalgar Studios and Glyn, Mills & Co – we will learn about those buildings near the end of our tour.  Remaining on this side of the street keep looking across the road until you are facing the Old Admiralty building.  We will walk by this building at the conclusion of this tour, but we get a better vantage point of the buildings from this side of the street.

For nearly 400 years this site has been directly connected with overseeing the Royal Navy.    George Villiers – the Lord High Admiral, first purchased the site in 1622 although the first purpose built building was not erected until 1695.  Within three decades the navy had outgrown this original Navy building and it was replaced (1726) with the one we can see behind the screen.

The screen is decorated with some appropriate nautical carvings including two, well… mutants – a kind of  horse-fish-bird (Pegasus meets Neptune?).  Looking through the screen at the pediment you can see more ‘sea’ carvings of an anchor.

After the Battle of Trafalgar (1805) the body of the Vice Admiral, Horatio Nelson, rested here briefly before his huge funeral procession through the streets of London to his final resting place in St Paul’s Cathedral.   His monument in nearby Trafalgar Square seems to be looking towards this building which was such a big part of his life.   Inside the building is the original model for Nelson’s statue. 

In 1964 the creation of the Ministry of Defence altered the way the armed forces were administered, but the navy still uses these facilities. 

 More details about the people, places and events associated with these sites can be found on the tour London - Whitehall  available on   www.obelisktours.co.uk