Historically, the name was derived from the hamlet of Charing ('Riverbend') that occupied the area of this important road junction in the middle ages, together with the grand Eleanor cross that once marked the site.

Charing Cross is marked on modern maps as a road junction, and was used in street numbering for the section of Whitehall between Great Scotland Yard and Trafalgar Square.

In 1541, religious artefacts were removed to St Margaret's, and the chapel was adapted as a private house; its almshouse were sequestered to the Royal Palace.

This was an attempt by Thomas Wyatt and others to overthrow Queen Mary I of England, soon after her accession to the throne, and replace her with Lady Jane Grey.

[12] The palace was defended by 1000 men under Sir John Gage at Charing Cross; they retreated within Whitehall after firing their shot, causing consternation within, thinking the force had changed sides.

The rebels – themselves fearful of artillery on the higher ground around St James's – did not press their attack and marched on to Ludgate, where they were met by the Tower Garrison and surrendered.

The whole area of the broad pavements of what was a three-way main junction with private (stables) turn-off was a popular place of street entertainment.

[20] This was combined with the south of the mews when Trafalgar Square was built on the site in 1832, the rest of the stable yard becoming the National Gallery primarily.

From here, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, coaches linked variously terminuses of: Dover, Brighton, Bath, Bristol, Cambridge, Holyhead and York.

"The story echoes an accident of 11 April 1800, when the Chatham and Rochester coach was emerging from the gateway of the Golden Cross, and "a young woman, sitting on the top, threw her head back, to prevent her striking against the beam; but there being so much luggage on the roof of the coach as to hinder her laying herself sufficiently back, it caught her face, and tore the flesh in a dreadful manner.

"[21] The inn and its yard, pillory, and what remained of the Royal Mews, made way for Trafalgar Square, and a new Golden Cross Hotel was built in the 1830s on the triangular block fronted by South Africa House.

[24] The next year the memorial was completed and Cardinal Wiseman died, having been appointed the first Archbishop of Westminster in 1850, with many Anglican churches also having restored or re-created their medieval ornamentations by the end of the century.

[24] It was intertwined with deeply philosophical movements associated with a re-awakening of "High Church" or Anglo-Catholic self-belief (and by the Catholic convert Augustus Welby Pugin) concerned by the growth of religious nonconformism.

[25] By the late 18th century, the Charing Cross district was increasingly coming to be perceived as the "centre" of the metropolis (supplanting the traditional heartland of the City to the east).

[26] From the early 19th century, legislation applicable only to the London metropolis used Charing Cross as a central point to define its geographical scope.

An exaggerated but well-meaning criticism was that "all the Books of Roads ... published, differ in the Situation of Mile Stones, and instead of being a Guide to the Traveller, serve only to confound him".

[33] William Camden speculated in 1586 that Roman roads in Britain had been measured from London Stone, a claim thus widely repeated, but unsupported by archaeological or other evidence.