Horses in London
sculpture, from the Quadriga at Hyde Park Corner to a sand bin on Temple Place
The horse is the most common animal in London sculpture by a wide margin, because for most of the period in which the city put up statues, a man of consequence was shown on one. What is more interesting is the horses that are not carrying anybody: a working dray, a bronze on an office front, four in harness on top of an arch in the middle of the traffic.
Ridden and unridden
An equestrian statue is about the rider. The horse is scale and dignity, and the sculptor's problem is making it convincing without letting it take over. Everything on this sheet is chosen the other way round: the horse is the subject, and in several cases there is no rider at all.
That turns out to select for the more recent work. Victorian and Edwardian London put men on horses; late twentieth-century London commissioned horses, which says something about what each period thought worth commemorating.
The entries
The Quadriga
Apsley Way, Hyde Park Corner W1J 7JZ Nearest station: Hyde Park Corner Adrian Jones
Four horses in harness drawing the chariot of war, with Peace descending on it: Peace descending on the Quadriga of War, put up in 1912 in place of an unpopular statue of Wellington himself and cast by A. B. Burton at Thames Ditton. How big it is depends who you ask: English Heritage calls it the largest bronze sculpture in Europe, other accounts the largest in Britain, so take the superlative as a claim and not a measurement. It was paid for by Lord Michelham, whose young son modelled for the charioteer; a tablet recording the gift went up in 1916. The arch beneath is Decimus Burton's, of 1826 to 1830, Grade I, and Constitution Arch, or the Green Park Arch, in its other names, and you can go up it for a charge, which puts you level with the horses.
Physical Energy
Kensington Gardens W2 Nearest station: South Kensington George Frederic Watts
A naked rider shading his eyes, looking east across Kensington Gardens. The sculptor worked on it for decades and cast versions for Cape Town and Harare as well; this is the one he kept adjusting. The horse is doing the work in it.
Jacob the dray horse
Queen Elizabeth Street SE1 Nearest station: London Bridge
A life-size cart horse near Tower Bridge, lifted into position by helicopter, commemorating the brewery that stood on the site and the horses that hauled for it. Working horses of this size were still delivering in London within living memory.
Rebellion
Middlesex Street E1 Nearest station: Liverpool Street Judy Boyt
A rearing horse on Middlesex Street, at the edge of the City, by a sculptor who works almost exclusively in equestrian subjects. Unridden, and much more energetic than the buildings around it.
The Hatton Garden horse
47 Hatton Garden EC1N 8EX Nearest station: Chancery Lane Guy Portelli
Three gilded horses in relief, cast into the front of the Sienna Building in the jewellery quarter. Guy Portelli made them in 1999 and called them the Palio Horses, after the bareback race round the Campo in Siena, which is where the building got its name. They are reliefs, not free-standing figures, so they read as part of the wall and are easy to walk past. Architectural animals like these are the least recorded category of London sculpture: there is no register of them at all, and this building is not listed. They are found by looking up.
Controlled Energy
100 Victoria Embankment EC4 Nearest station: Blackfriars William Reid Dick
Two groups of a figure restraining a horse, high on the corners of Unilever House at Blackfriars. They are Portland stone, they are far above eye level, and they are the best pieces of 1930s architectural sculpture on the Embankment.
The Minster Court horses
Minster Court, Mincing Lane EC3R 7AA Nearest station: Monument Althea Wynne
Three bronze horses over three metres tall in the forecourt of a City office complex, one for each of its three buildings. Althea Wynne modelled them in 1989 and they were installed in 1991, cast at the Morris Singer foundry for Prudential Portfolio Management. The work is The Minster Court Horses; the names Sterling, Dollar and Yen came later, from the money markets around them, and are nicknames, not titles. They are the most unapologetically corporate animals in London, and they were still standing there in March 2026. Their future is another matter: M&G Real Estate has a Wilkinson Eyre scheme for 1 and 2 Minster Court that would put a twenty-three-storey tower through two thirds of the existing cluster, and no published drawing says where the horses go.
The Yorkshire Grey
2 Theobald's Road WC1X 8PN Nearest station: Chancery Lane J. W. Brooker
A sculpted horse's head set into the fascia above the corner entrance of an 1877 pub by J. W. Brooker, Grade II. The name is the animal, not the regiment: a Yorkshire Grey, also called the Yorkshire Coach Horse, was a heavy carriage and dray breed, and the last of them died out in 1937. It is regularly explained as a reference to the Royal Scots Greys and a cavalryman, and the listing describes no cavalryman at all, just the horse's head. Still trading, now with rooms.
The Horse Hospital
30 Colonnade WC1N 1JD Nearest station: Russell Square Roger K. Burton
A working stable turned arts venue, and the best surviving evidence of how London moved before engines. The ramp the horses walked up is still there, moulded in concrete, with hardwood anti-slip slats surviving on the upper flight; so are the original iron tethering rings and five cast-iron pillars on each floor. The floor that looks cobbled is not: it is a mock herringbone laid in reinforced concrete, and the real cobbles are outside in the lane. Grade II. Historic England dates the present block to about 1890 on ground James Burton built up between 1794 and 1797, so the often-quoted 1797 belongs to the site rather than the building. Roger K. Burton founded the venue in 1992 and opened it in 1993; a rent rise from thirty to a hundred and thirty thousand pounds nearly finished it in 2019 and it reopened in May 2025. Check what is on before travelling.
Charles I at Charing Cross
Traffic island, top of Whitehall SW1 Nearest station: Charing Cross Hubert Le Sueur
The oldest bronze statue in London, and the reason to walk five minutes off this list's beat. Hubert Le Sueur cast it in 1633 and signed it; the pedestal is Joshua Marshall's, of 1674 and 1675. Historic England's entry calls it the first equestrian bronze of its kind in England. Grade I. It stands on the traffic island at the top of Whitehall, facing down towards the place where the king was executed, which is either an accident of traffic engineering or the most pointed piece of siting in London.
The Temple Place sand bin
Temple Place WC2 Nearest station: Temple
A cast-iron bin with a horse's head on the lid, on the pavement at Temple Place, left from when sand was kept at the roadside to help horses grip on wet stone. It is the smallest object on this sheet and the only one that was purely functional.
Questions
Which is the biggest?
The Quadriga on Wellington Arch, which is the largest bronze sculpture in Britain. Its scale is hard to judge from the ground because it sits on top of a triumphal arch in the middle of a roundabout; going up inside the arch is the only way to see it properly.
Why is there a sand bin with a horse on it?
Because London's streets were worked by horses, and wet granite setts were dangerous. Sand was kept at intervals along the roadside to be scattered on slopes and crossings. The bins outlasted the horses by decades and a handful are still in place, usually taken for ordinary street furniture.
Are any of these open to go inside?
Wellington Arch is, and it is worth it: there is an exhibition inside and a viewing platform that brings you close to the Quadriga. Everything else on this sheet is in the street or on the outside of a building and needs nothing but a look upward.
Where is the highest concentration?
Hyde Park Corner, where the Quadriga, the Cavalry Memorial and Achilles are all within a few hundred metres, along with several ridden statues not listed here. The Embankment between Blackfriars and Temple is the other dense stretch, mostly architectural, not free-standing.
Elsewhere on this site: guide to London statues, animal statues.