Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany, was the
commander-in-chief of the
British Army during the
French Revolutionary Wars and led the reform of the army into a capable modernised force. The Duke is remembered in the children's
nursery rhyme "
The Grand Old Duke of York". When he died in 1827, the entire British Army, by general consensus following a proposal of the senior officers, forwent one day's wages to pay for a monument to the Duke. When the sum of subscriptions for a monument to the Duke reached £21,000 (), the committee overseeing the project asked a number of architects to submit proposals, and in December 1830 they chose a design by
Benjamin Dean Wyatt. The mason Nowell of Pimlico was contracted to build the column for a sum of £15,760. Excavations for the concrete foundations began on 27 April 1831. The ground was excavated to a layer of natural soil, around below street level. A layer of
York stone slabs at a depth of around was used to consolidate the concrete, and another was placed at the top of the foundations, as a base for the masonry. The foundations were completed on 25 June 1831, and construction of the stonework began three weeks later. On 7 May 1850, Henri Joseph Stephan, a horn player in
Benjamin Lumley's orchestra at
Her Majesty's Theatre, committed suicide by falling from the public gallery at the top of the column. ==Description==