Duke of York Column;Frederick, Duke of York
The Duke of York Column stands at the top of the Duke of York Steps, on the north side of The Mall. A bronze figure crowns a 124-foot stone column that stands out against the London skyline. From the steps you look along a grand processional route: The Mall has seen coronations, state openings of Parliament and royal processions.
The man in bronze is Frederick, Duke of York, second son of King George III and Commander-in-Chief of the British Army. Sir Richard Westmacott completed the statue in 1834, and Benjamin Wyatt designed the column beneath it. The Duke lived from 1763 to 1827 and is probably the grand old Duke of York from the nursery rhyme.
Around the steps stand the Queen Victoria Memorial, the King George VI Memorial and the Guards Memorial. St James's Park lies close by, packed with royal and military memorials, and this monument counts among the most prominent. The memorial took about £21,000 to build, and soldiers provided most of it. Each gave a day's pay, the army's way of honouring a leader it wanted to remember.
- City
- City of Westminster
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The myTuur app is free, and once you are standing at a spot its story starts by itself.
Spots like this one are the stops myTuur strings into tours through City of Westminster. In the app, each story begins where you stand: walk up to a spot and it starts, read it on screen or listen as you go, then follow the route to the next one.
What is myTuur?
myTuur is a free city-guide app. Its tours are built from spots, and each spot carries a story that starts when you get there, to read or to listen to as you like.