Two weeks after his death in 1850 following a fall from his horse, the elders of the City of London met to discuss the establishment of a memorial to him. It was decided to erect a statue and, in July 1855, this 11-foot high bronze statue of Peel, standing on a 12-feet high granite pedestal was placed in the middle of the junction of Cheapside, Newgate Street and St Martin’s the Grand. Due to road congestion (probably caused by the statue), the statue was removed in 1934. It was agreed that the statue should be presented to the Metropolitan Police for display at the proposed new police college in Hendon. However, war intervened, the building of the college was delayed, and in 1939 the statue came back to the City to be placed in one of the outer recesses in the wall of the Bank of England, but it was too big. It was then stored in Old Street until 1952 when it was taken to Postman’s Park (the churchyard of St Botolph’s, Aldgate), where it stayed for 20 years. In the early 1970s, the pre-war proposals for the Metropolitan Police Training Centre were coming to fruition. Following representations from the Metropolitan Police Commissioner and the Home Secretary, the statue returned to Hendon. Sir Robert’s statue was unveiled by Her Majesty the Queen when, in 1974, she opened the Metropolitan Police Training Centre.
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