Presidents and Politics
Places in England connected with a US premier
Statue of Abraham Lincoln in front of Middlesex Guildhall
Parliament Square, Westminster, London
Listed Grade II in 1970
Memorial statue to Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865), sixteenth president of the United States of America. Erected in 1920, the statue is cast as a replica of the famous statue of Lincoln in Lincoln Park, Chicago by American sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens. It comprises a bronze figure standing in front of a Grecian chair on a granite pedestal, the latter designed by American architects MacKin, Mead and White. The presentation of the statue was intended to coincide with the centenary of the Treaty of Ghent of 1814, which had ended hostilities between the United States and Great Britain, and to mark the completion of 100 years of Peace among English-speaking peoples. Controversy surrounded the appearance of the sculpture. The Saint-Gaudens statue was supported at first with Sir George Frampton considering the Chicago original “perhaps the most beautiful monument in America.” The outbreak of WWI delayed the project, however, and by the time the matter was revived in 1917 American officials had decided to substitute the Saint-Gaudens with a replica of a sculpture of Lincoln by George Gray Barnard which had recently been unveiled in Cincinnati. Subsequently, the artistic merits of both were widely discussed from the House of Commons down and on both sides of the Atlantic. Lincoln’s son, who had served as a United States Ambassador to London spoke out against the Barnard replica, arguing that it would be “an international calamity” if it were selected. A decision was postponed until after the war, and favour reverted to the Saint-Gaudens, despite the new Barnard statue having already been cast. In 1919, the rejected Barnard was unveiled in Manchester.
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9 Grosvenor Square
City of Westminster, London
Listed at Grade II in 1962
This corner terraced town house was build c.1725 by William Barlow, junior. From 1785-88 it was the residence of John Adams, first US Ambassador to the Court of St. James's 1785-88, and later the second US President (1797–1801). It is also one of only 4 houses surviving the mid twentieth century rebuild of Grosvenor Square, now home to the US Embassy, designed by Eero Saarinen.
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Memorial to President John F Kennedy
Runnymede, Egham
Listed Grade II in 1999
Unveiled in 1965, the memorial was designed by Geoffrey Jellicoe and is a 10ft by 5 ft wide Portland stone slab on a granite base. The stone is imperceptibly curved in all directions to counter optical illusion. It is inscribed 'THIS ACRE OF ENGLISH GROUND WAS GIVEN TO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY THE PEOPLE OF BRITAIN IN MEMORY OF JOHN F KENNEDY, BORN 29 MAY 1917: PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 1961-63: DIED BY AN ASSASSIN'S HAND 22 NOVEMBER 1963: "Let every nation know whether it wishes us well or ill that we shall pay any price bear any burden meet any hardship support any friend or oppose any foe in order to assure the survival and success of liberty" - from the inaugural address of President Kennedy 10 January 1961'. The British Government gave this land to the United States as a tribute to Kennedy shortly after his assassination. The memorial is representative of the trend from the 1960s towards simple slabs with beautifully carved lettering. But this example is more, demonstrating the perfect integration of architecture with landscape that makes this the consummation of Jellicoe's development as an architect turned landscape designer and perhaps his most intense work. He wrote that he had based his ideas on John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, and that the piece is intended to be seen as a point in a journey through the landscape. Behind the memorial stone is an American scarlet oak, which turns red in November, the month of Kennedy's death. The sequence continues as a paved walk or 'Jacob's ladder' leading to a pair of stone seats designed by Jellicoe set into the hillside at a point where he lets a view through the trees to the river and beyond. The two seats are placed unequally in a relationship Jellicoe calls 'familial' and in one drawing are marked as 'president' and 'consort'.
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The Manor House
Sulgrave Manor Road, South Northamptonshire
Listed Grade I in 1969
Manor house built c1540-60 by Lawrence Washington, a wool merchant who became mayor of Northampton in 1532. He was the great-great-great-grandfather of George Washington, the first president of the United States of America. The house was sold in 1659 and had no further connection with the Washington family who emigrated to Virginia in 1656, but in 1914 it was purchased as a memorial to George Washington. Not all of the C16 fabric survives, some having been demolished when the house became a farm in the C18 and other parts when Reginald Blomfield restored the house in 1920-30. The coursed limestone rubble house is on an L-plan with a through passage and has two storeys plus an attic. A gabled two-storey porch in the centre has a four-centred entrance arch under a square hood with the Washington coat of arms in the spandrels and also in plaster above. There is a plaster coat of arms of Queen Elizabeth I in the gable and a triangular device in plaster, said to be the wool stapler's symbol, at the apex. The windows are four-light wood mullion and transoms. The Great Hall has a screen designed by Blomfield and an original open fireplace with moulded timber four-centred arch and stone jambs. The windows contain reproductions of stained glass arms of the Washington family; the originals are in Fawsley Church and Weston Hall. An oak parlour on the ground floor has an early C18 fireplace with a moulded stone surround and panelled walls and an overmantel of the same date. In the kitchen is a large open fireplace with ovens. The staircase is late C17 with twisted balusters. The Great Chamber, on the first floor, has a fireplace similar to that in the hall and an open timber roof of two-bays.
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Statue of Abraham Lincoln
Brazenose Street, Manchester
Listed Grade II in 1974
Erected in 1919, this is a bronze, over-life-size statue on a high late C20 plinth. The statue is by the American sculptor George Gray Barnard (1863-1938) and is a replica of that installed in Lytle Park, Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1917. Charles P Taft, the brother of ex-President Taft, who had funded the erection of the statue in Cincinnati and the casting of a replica originally intended for London, wanted this statue to go to Britain. Shortly after Woodrow Wilson's visit to the city, Manchester formally requested that the Barnard statue be erected there. In the end, it was unveiled a year before the Saint-Gaudens statue that London had preferred was erected in the capital. Since a suitable city-centre site could not be found it was set in Platt Fields Park and then was resited in Lincoln Square in 1986.
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Statue of George Washington
Trafalgar Square, City of Westminster
Listed Grade II in 1970
This bronze statue on a stone pedestal is a replica of Jean-Antoine Houdon's c1780 marble statue in the Virginia State Capital (designed by Thomas Jefferson) in Richmond, Virginia. The statue arrived in England in April 1921 and was unveiled on 30th June 1921.
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Washington House
Islip High Street, Northamptonshire
Listed Grade II in 1967
House dating from the late C16 and C17, restored C20. This was the home of Dame Mary Washington, great-grandmother of George Washington. She was the wife of John Washington who in 1656 left England for Virginia. The single storey L-shaped building is constructed of square coursed limestone and has an attic with a Colleyweston slate roof. The main front is a six-window range of irregularly spaced casements under wood lintels. The gabled cross wing to the left has a leaded casement at first floor under a hood mould. The return has a C17 two-light stone mullion window at first floor level. Inside, the entrance hall has a C17 corner fireplace with a moulded stone surround and a four-centred arch head. The centre room has large open fireplace with bressumer and salt cupboards and a C18 corner cupboard. The staircase has a C17 splat balustrade and an adjacent wall adjacent is a close-studded timber frame, incorporating a raised cruck. In the first floor room at the head of the staircase is a C17 corner fireplace with moulded stone surround and a four-centred-arch head.
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Statue of President Roosevelt
Grosvenor Square, Westminster, London
Listed Grade II in 1970
Memorial statue to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in centre of square gardens, erected in 1948, by Sir William Reid Dick. The gardens had also been re-planned in 1947-8 in memory of FDR. The statue is a life size bronze, on corniced stone pedestal.
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Winfield House
Outer Circle, Regent’s Park, City of Westminster, London
Listed Grade II in 2001
Detached house, now the official London residence of the United States Ambassador to the Court of St James, in extensive grounds. Built in 1936 by L. Rome Guthrie of Wimperis, Simpson and Guthrie for the Woolworth's heiress Barbara Hutton. The thirteen bay entrance front has projecting three-bay ends flanking additional single storey entrance extension with central door flanked by Doric columns carrying a segment-topped parapet, containing a relief of the seal of the USA. After war service as an officers' club it was sold for a dollar to the United States government for use as the ambassador's residence. After extensive alterations the house was first officially used by Winthrop Aldrich, Ambassador to the Court of St James in 1953-57. It is listed as an exceptional ambassador's residence and as a notable Neo-Georgian town house containing numerous features of note. Maria Tuttle, wife of the Ambassador Robert Homes Tuttle, published a book on the building in 2008.
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