(I started writing this post at 4pm yesterday when anything seemed possible, indeed likely)
If you want to see three lions you can go to London Zoo because they've got five. Normally you can also go to Trafalgar Square where four Landseer lions guard the base of Nelson's Column but that's off limits as present because it's been requisitioned as a fan zone for the Euros. Thankfully the capital has thousands of other lions, mostly embellishments and statuary, so I headed off in search of three particularly interesting prides...
Lions 1) The Victoria Embankment
The Victoria Embankment was constructed between 1864 and 1870 so has been shoring up the river for a century and a half. It exists because it was the best way of shoehorning a megasewer, a road and an underground railway into the heart of the West End, but also narrowed the Thames and caused its tidal range to increase. The embankment was constructed of granite-faced battered walls topped with a moulded parapet, interrupted at intervals by pilasters topped with ‘sturgeon’ lamp standards. These are easily seen but unless you're out on the river it's harder to spot the bronze lion heads positioned underneath, one apiece, each with a mooring ring in its mouth.
There are far more than three lions, there are dozens spaced out around the bend between the Palace of Westminster and Blackfriars Bridge, designed by the sculptor Timothy Butler. They look individually splendid, each now with a greenish patina, and occasionally lean downwards if their top fastening's come away from the river wall. What they don't get used as these days is mooring rings, partly because boats are a lot heavier than they used to be but also because the tide fluctuates so much the water level's usually several metres below. Indeed there's a rhyme about that.
This rhyme isn't a Bazalgette original, more an urban legend that's grown up based on apocryphal observation. The water level gets up to the mooring rings during spring tides, particularly in spring and autumn, and heavy rainfall or a tidal surge can add a few more inches. But although the mouth is just above pavement level it's still comfortably below the level of the wall, especially since an extra foot of concrete was added after the only serious inundation. That was back in January1928 when the embankment overtopped here, but more significantly in Pimlico where ten people drowned in their basements, there being no lions to protect them.
Lions 2) The Law Society
Next we're off to Chancery Lane and the headquarters of the Law Society, the august professional body who oversee the working lives of solicitors. They've been at it since 1825, and been based here at number 113 since 1832. The building boasts an Ionic pedimented portico of four unfluted columns with recessed sash windows in shallow moulded architraves, and was augmented in 1904 by an annexe designed by Charles Holden, the bloke who did all those tube stations. What we're interested in are the railings in front of the newer bit where we find several dazzlinggolden lions sitting on their haunches, thirteen in total.
They started life across town on low posts by the entrance lodges outside the British Museum, and were designed by Dorset-born sculptor Alfred Stevens. He's the man commissioned with devising the Duke of Wellington's memorial in St Paul's Cathedral, despite only coming fifth in the competition, a monumental task which consumed most of the rest of his life. When the British Museum ditched their lions in 1896 some were placed on the railings around the Wellington monument and the rest ended up here in front of the Law Society building where it's a lot cheaper to stand and admire them. They've also been coated in something gold, whereas those guarding the Duke are bog standard iron, so you get a much blingier lion with the Law on your side.
Lions 3) The College of Arms
The monarch's heraldic experts have been based on Queen Victoria Street since 1555, long before Queen Victoria or her street existed. It's their job to grant coats of arms, record pedigrees and issue diktats on the flying of flags, as well as turning up at coronations in brightly-coloured tunics. Officially they're part of the Royal Household which'll be why the royal coat of arms takes pride of place above the steps at the main entrance. This features a crowned lion standing on a crown as the crest, plus a lion on the left (representing England) and a unicorn on the right (representing Scotland). If you're Irish you have to make do with a quarter on the shield rather than a rampant beast, and if you're Welsh bad luck.
England's three lions are also a heraldic feature, the royal arms of the Plantagenets. They were first used by Richard the Lionheart who started out with one or two lions on his shield but eventually stuck with three in 1198. The symbols of other countries (including France) subsequently found themselves incorporated into the royal arms but England has always been represented by gules, three lions passant guardant in pale or armed and langued azure. The College of Arms know these things, indeed it's their job, so this is plainly the finest place to go lion-spotting during a major tournament.
Lions are readily seen elsewhere across London.
(also, for one day only, on the comatose bodies of young men in replica shirts)
