The Great Fire destroyed the last of the wooden Temple Bars. Sir Christopher Wren was employed to put up the Temple Bar which, in memory, in fact or in picture, is familiar to all.
That was the Temple Bar of Pepys, of John Gay's "Trivia" (though he never names it), of Dr. Johnson (who saw upon its spikes the heads of the rebels of the '45, among which, as many believe his own head might perchance have had a place).
Beneath it (permission duly obtained) passed Sovereign after Sovereign on their way to banquet at Guildhall or to give thanks at St. Paul's.
It saw Queen Victoria as a radiant girl on her visit to the City in her accession year; and it saw Queen Victoria, a mournful widow and anxious mother, on the day in 1872 when the nation gave thanks at St. Paul's for the Prince of Wales's escape from death. Two centuries packed with history, association, and romance; and then, in 1878, Temple Bar was taken down.
The City gave it away to who would have it. That was, as it happened, Sir Henry Meux, who put it all up, stone for stone, as one of the gates to his park of Theobalds, near Waltham Cross.
Thirty years later the City wanted Temple Bar back again, and could not have it. But in 1984 it was purchased by the Temple Bar Trust from the Meux Trust for £1.
In 2003 it was carefully dismantled and transported back to the City of London on 500 pallets and re-erected as an entrance to Paternoster Square to the north of St Paul's Cathedral. It opened to the public the following year.