Today, Sir Christopher Wren’s Temple Bar is being reopened in the City of London, 125 years after it was moved out of the city into the grounds of Theobalds Park.
This has got to be a good thing, although one suspect’s that it’s probably faired better in its wooded home for the last century or so, than it would have done if subjected to car fumes. I hope they’ve treated it well.
The monument had to be taken down carefully stone by stone, and has taken over a year to complete. There’s a fantastic website devoted entirely to the monument here. I note however, that there’s no definitive proof that Wren designed the Bar…
But the real reason for me writing about this is that Theobalds Park is a place where I’ve regularly been, since it was not far from my school, and there was an educational facility there where we learnt about nature. They kept all kinds of snakes and spiders and taught us about the great British wildlife. The Temple Bar was in their grounds.