I was in Newcastle the other day and found myself standing beneath Lord Grey’s Monument. The column is 135 feet of Roman Doric, which seems a generous allotment for a man now principally famous as a bergamot-blend tea. Earl Grey passed the Great Reform Act of 1832 and broke the old grand Whiggism, of which he was a scion, in the process. The city built the column while he was still alive. Two hundred years on, Lord Grey is a landmark locals use to orient themselves towards Primark. A few yards away, in the cathedral, I came upon a memorial to Admiral Collingwood, Nelson’s second-in-command at Trafalgar. I doubt one Geordie in a hundred could tell you who he was.
In my own part of London, we have Portobello Road, named for another seaman’s triumph, Admiral Vernon’s capture of Porto Bello from the Spanish in 1739. The road now sells bric-a-brac, and nobody browsing the stalls has Porto Bello on their mind.
And if we move beyond the Scottish Border, Glasgow’s Virginia Street and Jamaica Street map the Atlantic trade in a few hundred yards of tarmac, though for those walking down them the names pass without remark. In the city’s Royal Exchange Square, the Iron Duke sits on horseback, wearing, as he has for decades, a traffic cone on his head.
