Monuments & Ruins

Not every statue in London. The ones worth crossing the road for: Roman wall, medieval ruins, and the monuments that earn a detour.

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Boadicea and Her Daughters

Thornycroft's bronze of the queen who burned Roman London, charging at Parliament from the end of Westminster Bridge.

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Photo by Paul Walter, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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Boudica, queen of the Iceni, led the British rising of AD 60 that burned Londinium to the ground before the legions destroyed her army, and the Victorians, who had a queen of their own, made her a founding heroine. Thomas Thornycroft worked on this group from 1856 until his death in 1885, with Prince Albert lending horses from the royal stables as models, and his son finished it; it stood in the studio for another seventeen years before the money was found to cast it and set it up here in 1902. It is a Victorian idea of Boudica rather than a historical one: she rides a scythed chariot of a kind no Briton ever drove, dressed like Britannia, spear up, daughters at her knees, and nobody holds the reins. The suffragettes made it their rallying point, and with Big Ben behind it it has been in more photographs than almost any statue in London.

Where
Westminster Bridge, Victoria Embankment, SW1A 2JH
Nearest station
Westminster · 1 min walk

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Data is compiled from public sources including OpenStreetMap, under the ODbL. Hours change often, so check before making a journey.

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