page_title: Royal Mews
section_title: Charing Cross
hierarchical_section_title: Royal Mews / Charing Cross
caption_attribution_description: English: Royal Stables in the Mews, Charing Cross.
context_page_description: The Royal Mews is a mews of the British Royal Family. In London these stables and stable-hands quarters have occupied two main sites in turn: the north side of Charing Cross and since the 1820s, to make way for Trafalgar Square, part of the grounds of Buckingham Palace. The site has display royal carriages and motor vehicles. It is open to the public for much of the year.
context_section_description: The first set of stables to be referred to as a mews was at Charing Cross at the western end of The Strand. The royal hawks were kept at this site from 1377 and the name derives from the fact that they were confined there at moulting (or "mew") time.
  The building was destroyed by fire in 1534 and rebuilt as a stables, keeping its former name when it acquired this new function. On old maps, such as the "Woodcut" map of London of the early 1560s, the Mews can be seen extending back towards the site of today's Leicester Square.
  This building was usually known as the King's Mews, but was also sometimes referred to as the Royal Mews, the Royal Stables, or as the Queen's Mews when there was a woman on the throne. It was rebuilt again in 1732 to the designs of William Kent, and in the early 19th century it was open to the public.
  On 15 June 1820, the Guards in the Royal Mews mutinied in support of Caroline of Brunswick, whom King George IV was seeking to divorce.
  It was an impressive classical building, and there was an open space in front of it which ranked among the larger ones in central London at a time when the Royal Parks were on the fringes of the city and the gardens of London's squares were open only to the residents of the surrounding houses.
caption: The Mews at Charing Cross in 1793
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