WREN'S TEMPLE BAR GATE
Rusticated, it is a two-story structure consisting of one wide central arch for the road traffic, flanked on both sides by narrower arches for pedestrians. On the upper part, four statues celebrate the Stuart monarchy: on the west side Charles II is shown with his father Charles I whose parents James I and Anne of Denmark are depicted on the east side. During the 18th century, the heads of traitors were mounted on pikes and exhibited on the roof. The other seven principal gateways to London (Ludgate, Newgate, Aldersgate, Cripplegate, Moorgate, Bishopsgate and Aldgate) had all been demolished by 1800, but Temple Bar remained despite its impediment to the ever-growing traffic. The upper story room was leased to the neighbouring banking house of Child & Co for records storage.[citation needed] It was discovered that the keystones had dropped in 1874. In 1878 the City of London Corporation, eager to widen the road but unwilling to destroy so historic a monument, dismantled it piece-by-piece over an 11-day period and stored its 2,700 stones carefully. In 1880, at the instigation of his wife, Valerie Susan Meux, the brewer Henry Meux bought the stones and re-erected the arch as a gateway at his house, Theobalds Park, between Enfield and Cheshunt in Hertfordshire. There it remained, incongruously sitting in a clearing in a wood, from 1878–2003.
Temple Bar in Patenoster square.
In 1984, it was purchased by the Temple Bar Trust from the Meux Trust for £1. It was carefully dismantled and returned on 500 pallets to the City of London, where it was painstakingly re-erected as an entrance to the Paternoster Square redevelopment just north of St Paul's Cathedral. It opened to the public on 10 November 2004.
The top of one of the gates appeared at auction by Dreweatts London sale of surplus stock from LASSCO on 15 June 2013.
CURRENT MARKER
With the demolition of Wren's gate decided, Horace Jones, Architect and Surveyor to the City of London, designed a memorial to mark Temple Bar which was unveiled in 1880.
The elaborate pedestal in a Neo-Renaissance style serves as the base for Charles Bell Birch's sculpture commonly referred to as Griffin (it is, however, a dragon) as the symbol for the City of London. The pedestal is decorated with statues (by Joseph Boehm) of Queen Victoria and The Prince of Wales, the last royals to enter the City through Wren's gate – an event depicted in one of the reliefs which also decorate the structure.
IN FICTION
The Dragon on top of Temple Bar comes to life in Charlie Fletcher's children's book about unLondon, Stoneheart.
Charles Dickens mentioned Temple Bar in Book II, Chapter I of A Tale of Two Cities, noting its proximity to Tellson's Bank, also on Fleet Street. This was in fact Child & Co. which used the upper rooms of the Bar as storage space. While critiquing the moral poverty of late-18th century London, Dickens wrote that in matters of crime and punishment, "putting to death was a recipe much in vogue," and illustrated the horror caused by severed heads, "exposed on Temple Bar with an insensate brutality and ferocity..."
In Herman Melville's Paradise of Bachelors and Tartarus of Maids, Melville contrasts the beauty of the Temple Bar gateway with the highest point on the road leading to the hellish paper factory, which he calls a "Dantean Gateway." (Dante describes the gateway to hell in his Inferno, over which are written the words, "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.")
The dragon also features in Virginia Woolf's "The Years", in which one of the main characters, Martin, points "at the splayed-out figure at Temple Bar; it looked as ridiculous as usual – something between a serpent and a fowl."