Secret Gardens of the City of London

By Stephen Liddell

There is London and then there is the City of London, or Londinium as the Romans called it. The oldest part of the city; the City or Square Mile. Full of the buildings and institutions that have shaped our lives and not just our world, but the world.

Greater London itself has just been declared the world’s first National Park City with 50% of it being in some way green or indeed blue; gardens, footpaths and bridleways of course, canals, rivers, woods and parks. Many of them are known well beyond our shores, Hyde Park, Richmond Park, Wimbledon Common, Hampstead Heath to name but a few. Like many of the most famous districts, streets and buildings, they are not really in London but in places such as Westminster or Chelsea.

The real London, the City of London, is something of a mystery to many, even those who work here every day, decade after decade. It has none of the wide streets of the West End or the mile upon mile of well-to-do housing of Notting Hill or Kensington. And maybe that is why it remains a mystery. Between St Paul’s Cathedral and the Tower of London is largely a hidden world all shaped by geography, Romans, Vikings, Saxons and the dynasties that came after the Norman invasions, the Great and not so great fires, the plagues and other natural disasters and all those wars.

I still remember the day when the first steps towards writing this book took place. It was a freezing cold, muddy December day in 2017. I was out exploring so many of the multitude of lanes and courts that Dr Johnson himself would have been proud of me. There came a point towards the end of the day when I realised my shoes were muddy. Not dirty from the odd puddle or the natural winter grime of a big city but caked in mud. I realised that in all my life I had been to London to work, to study, to live, to shop, to eat, to enjoy culture, to date even but never before had my shoes got so muddy that I might as well have trudged miles through the Lake District.

It piqued my curiosity, all those little green spaces I vaguely knew of and no doubt countless more I was blissfully unaware of. Every one of these gardens or squares had a reason for being. They were all different and largely overlooked even by workers passing the nearest busy road, often just feet away.

I didn’t think anyone else would be interested in my hare-brained line of thought. Of all the things to see in London, who would want to literally get away from it all? As it turned out tourists, like myself, were in awe that we could be standing in the middle of perhaps the most powerful and epic city of all time and yet be totally alone save for flowers, bushes, trees, butterflies, birds, mammals and more. Weekdays would see us barely meet anyone; weekends would see us meeting fewer still. I remember Boxing Day in 2018 and the 2nd of January 2020, when we didn’t see a single person in the entire City of London.

I’ve tried to make this as exhaustive as possible. I’ve walked down every road, lane and alley I could find and have been doing so for years. I’ve played hunches, and looked at old books and maps and the latest satellite imagery too. London is always changing, that’s one of its great and sometimes annoying qualities. Several parks each year are renovated, new buildings spring up and even in the last year or two new developments have brought us gleaming new parks and open spaces in the City of London. This book doesn’t claim to be in any way a garden encyclopaedia, it is just a guide to hopefully encourage more people to get the train or tube into the City of London and go off and explore this great old city that is so well visited and yet unexplored.

Go out and find your own favourite garden, bench, tree or statue. I would say how badly could you get lost in a square mile? The answer is not only ‘very’ but also ‘totally and utterly’.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stephen Liddell
• Release date: Aug 25, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005675660

Stephen Liddell

Author Stephen Liddell lives in Hertfordshire, just outside London, England. For Stephen, writing started as a hobby and turned into a career as he became a multi-genre writer and historian for magazines, online resources and of course his first love, books.When not writing, Stephen enjoys travelling with his wife and personally runs Ye Olde England Tours which specialise in private tours to historic and cultural attractions. Stephen loves meeting people from all walks of life and this often shows through in his stories.For more information on Author Stephen Liddell please visit his website www.stephenliddell.co.uk for links to his books, blogs and tours.

Book preview

SECRET GARDENS OF THE CITY OF LONDON

First Published in 2020.

Copyright © 2020 Stephen Liddell

Front Cover Art and Design by Stephen Liddell

The moral rights of the author have been asserted. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the author and publisher.

Dedication

This book is dedicated to someone who loves exploring the alleys and lanes of old London town as much as I do; my friend and one of the best guides in London, Kevin Pearman.

And also to Tash Leventis, who is as beautiful and spiritual as any garden here but a whole lot nosier and giver of epic hugs.

Sir, if you wish to have a just notion of the magnitude of this city, you must not be satisfied with seeing its great streets and squares, but must survey the innumerable little lanes and courts. - Dr Samuel Johnson

Table of Contents

1. 25 Cannon Street

2. Abchurch Yard

3. Aldermanbury Square

4. Aldgate Square

5. All Hallows-by-the-Tower Churchyard

6. All Hallows London Wall

7. Amen Court

8. Apothecaries' Hall

9. Bank of England Garden Court

10. Barber-Surgeons' Hall Gardens

11. Barbican Estate * (including Beech Gardens, Defoe Gardens, Barbican Wildlife Garden, Lakeside Gardens and Lakeside Terrace)

12. Barnard's Inn

13. Blackfriars Bridge South Garden and Blackfriars Underpass

14. Brewers' Hall Garden

15. Bridgewater Square

16. Carter Lane Garden

17. Christchurch Greyfriars Church Garden

18. Christchurch Greyfriars Churchyard

19. Cleary Garden

20. Coleman Gardens

21. Cutlers Gardens (Devonshire Square)

22. Dean's Court (St Paul's Deanery)

23. Devonshire Square

24. Distaff Lane Garden

25. Drapers' Hall Garden

26. Fen Court

27. Fenchurch Place

28. Festival Gardens

29. Finsbury Circus Gardens

30. Fishmongers' Hall Garden

31. Gardens of Inner Temple (including Hare Court, King's Bench Walk)

32. Gardens of Middle Temple * (including Fountain Court, Elm Court, Pump Court, Church Court, Brick Court, New Court)

33. George Yard

34. Girdlers' Hall Garden

35. Golden Lane Estate

36. Gough Square

37. Grocers' Hall Courtyard

38. Guildhall Piazza and Guildhall Yard

39. Jubilee Gardens

40. King George's Field

41. King's College London Strand Campus, Maughan Library and Information Services Centre

42. London Wall - Moorgate

43. Merchant Taylors' Garden

44. Mitre Square

45. Monkwell Square

46. Museum of London

47. Noble Street Gardens

48. Old Change Court

49. One New Change

50. One Tree Park

51. Paternoster Square

52. Postman's Park

53. Queen Street

54. Royal Exchange Buildings

55. Saddlers' Hall Garden

56. Salisbury Square

57. Salters' Garden

58. Seething Lane Gardens

59. Senator House Gardens

60. Serjeants' Inn Courtyard

61. Sky Garden

62. St Alban's Tower

63. St Alphage Garden and St Alphage Extension Garden

64. St Andrew Holborn Churchyard

65. St Andrew Street Garden and Holborn Circus Garden

66. St Andrew Undershaft Churchyard

67. St Andrew-by-the-Wardrobe Churchyard

68. St Ann Blackfriars Burial Grounds: Church Entry and Ireland Yard

69. St Anne and St Agnes

70. St Bartholomew's Hospital including St Bartholomew-the-Less Church

71. St Bartholomew-the-Great Churchyard

72. St Benet Welsh Church

73. St Botolph Without Aldgate Churchyard

74. St Botolph Without Bishopsgate Churchyard

75. St Bride's Fleet Street Churchyard

76. St Clement Eastcheap

77. St Dunstan-in-the-East

78. St Dunstan-in-the-West Burial Ground

79. St Edmund the King and Martyr Churchyard

80. St Ethelburga's Centre for Reconciliation and Peace

81. St Giles Cripplegate Churchyard

82. St Helen’s Bishopsgate Churchyard

83. St Helen’s Square

84. St James Garlickhythe Church

86. St John Zachary Garden (Goldsmiths' Garden)

86. St Katherine Coleman Churchyard

87. St Katharine Cree Churchyard

88. St Laurence Pountney Graveyards

89. St Magnus the Martyr Churchyard

90. St Margaret Lothbury

91. St Margaret Pattens

92. St Martin Orgar Churchyard

93. St Martin Outwich Churchyard

94. St Mary Aldermanbury

95. St Mary Aldermary Churchyard

96. St Mary at Hill Churchyard

97. St Mary Staining Churchyard

98. St Mary Woolnoth

99. St Mary-le-Bow Churchyard

100. St Michael Cornhill Churchyard

101. St Nicholas Cole Abbey

102. St Olave Hart Street Churchyard

103. St Olave Silver Street

104. St Olave's House

105. St Pancras Churchyard

106. St Paul's Cathedral Churchyard

107. St Peter Cheap

108. St Peter's Cornhill

109. St Sepulchre without Newgate Churchyard

110. St Stephen Walbrook Churchyard

111. St Swithin's Church Garden

112. St Vedast alias Foster Churchyard

113. Staple Inn Garden and Courtyard

114. Stationers' Hall Garden

115. Tallow Chandlers' Hall Courtyard

116. The Garden at 120

117. The Master's Garden

118. The Temple Churchyard

119. Tower Hill Gardens

120. Tower of All Hallows Staining

121. Tower of St Mary Somerset Church

122. Tower Place

123. Wardrobe Place

124. Warwick Square

125. West Smithfield Garden

126. Whittington Garden

Preface

I’ve been creating and running unique walking tours in London for almost 7 years now with my company Ye Olde England Tours. I’ve always enjoyed exploring; it doesn’t matter if it is a desert, a forest or London.

Without including neighbouring and adjoining satellite towns, Greater London itself is 611 square miles or 1,572 square kilometres. It is composed of dozens of once tiny villages and settlements that have grown together over 2,000 years to create the great city that we live, work and travel in.

There is London and then there is the City of London, or Londinium as the Romans called it. The oldest part of the city; the City or Square Mile. Full of the buildings and institutions that have shaped our lives and not just our world, but the world.

Greater London itself has just been declared the world’s first National Park City with 50% of it being in some way green or indeed blue; gardens, footpaths and bridleways of course, canals, rivers, woods and parks. Many of them are known well beyond our shores, Hyde Park, Richmond Park, Wimbledon Common, Hampstead Heath to name but a few. Like many of the most famous districts, streets and buildings, they are not really in London but in places such as Westminster or Chelsea.

The real London, the City of London, is something of a mystery to many, even those who work here every day, decade after decade. It has none of the wide streets of the West End or the mile upon mile of well-to-do housing of Notting Hill or Kensington. And maybe that is why it remains a mystery. Between St Paul’s Cathedral and the Tower of London is largely a hidden world all shaped by geography, Romans, Vikings, Saxons and the dynasties that came after the Norman invasions, the Great and not so great fires, the plagues and other natural disasters and all those wars.

Several of my tourists from neurological professions have told me that it is medically proven that those few people who know London like the back of their hand end up with such a specially wired brain that they have a higher inbuilt resistance to diseases such as Alzheimer’s, London being such an unfathomable maze. An epic, senseless mess of a place until one learns every road, every alley, every wild goose chase of a short cut and dead end… then it makes perfect sense.

I still remember the day when the first steps towards writing this book took place. It was a freezing cold, muddy December day in 2017. I was out exploring so many of the multitude of lanes and courts that Dr Johnson himself would have been proud of me. There came a point towards the end of the day when I realised my shoes were muddy. Not dirty from the odd puddle or the natural winter grime of a big city but caked in mud. I realised that in all my life I had been to London to work, to study, to live, to shop, to eat, to enjoy culture, to date even but never before had my shoes got so muddy that I might as well have trudged miles through the Lake District.

It piqued my curiosity, all those little green spaces I vaguely knew of and no doubt countless more I was blissfully unaware of. Every one of these gardens or squares had a reason for being. They were all different and largely overlooked even by workers passing the nearest busy road, often just feet away.

I didn’t think anyone else would be interested in my hare-brained line of thought. Of all the things to see in London, who would want to literally get away from it all? As it turned out tourists, like myself, were in awe that we could be standing in the middle of perhaps the most powerful and epic city of all time and yet be totally alone save for flowers, bushes, trees, butterflies, birds, mammals and more. Weekdays would see us barely meet anyone; weekends would see us meeting fewer still. I remember Boxing Day in 2018 and the 2nd of January 2020, when we didn’t see a single person in the entire City of London.

Everyone who had been round with me had enjoyed it so much that it convinced me that these little secret and often sacred gardens should garner a little bit more publicity. Not too much of course, that would be a disaster! So I decided to write this book, a catalogue and guide to these pocket parks. Little did I know how many there would be. How many could there be within the Square Mile? 40? 50 perhaps. I can’t have been thinking straight as I knew 70 or 80 off the top of my head but if I had known there were 124 gardens in the City of London then I might never have even started writing.

I’ve tried to make this as exhaustive as possible. I’ve walked down every road, lane and alley I could find and have been doing so for years. I’ve played hunches, and looked at old books and maps and the latest satellite imagery too. London is always changing, that’s one of its great and sometimes annoying qualities. Several parks each year are renovated, new buildings spring up and even in the last year or two new developments have brought us gleaming new parks and open spaces in the City of London.

All the information and maps are as accurate as possible at the time of publication but if you spot something that needs updating or even a new garden that appears then do let me know and I’ll credit you in any future edition.

This book doesn’t claim to be in any way a garden encyclopaedia, it is just a guide to hopefully encourage more people to get the train or tube into the City of London and go off and explore this great old city that is so well visited and yet unexplored. Go out and find your own favourite garden, bench, tree or statue. I would say how badly could you get lost in a square mile? The answer is not only ‘very’ but also ‘totally and utterly’.

If this book is anything then it is an act of love; I hope you’ll forgive me this act of indulgence.

25 Cannon Street

At A Glance: Almost uniquely it seems in the City of London, these gardens don’t seem to have an official name despite their prestigious location just across the road from St Paul’s Cathedral.

Site location: New Change/Cannon Street

Postcode: EC4R 2YA

Grid ref: TQ325808

Type of site: Public Gardens

Date(s): 2000

Designer(s) Robert Myers Associates

Site ownership: Pembroke

Site management: Pembroke

Open to public?: Yes

Opening times: 24/7

Public transport - Tube Station: St Paul's (Central); Mansion House (District, Circle)

25 Cannon Street.png

Contains OS data © Crown copyright and database rights 2020

History

This garden rather resembles a garden square one might find west of the city with a large oval lawn, surrounded by dense planting and a multitude of benches to sit and admire the garden or the fine view of the dome of St Paul’s.

In May 2020 it was announced that the garden would be redeveloped and include a reflection pool with views of St Paul’s.

It’s a very pleasant place to spend some time, and the use of Portland stone walls and steps goes well with the adjoining Neo-classical building. Step out to the north and you might find a bust of Admiral Arthur Phillip which commemorates the discovery and fixing of the site of Sydney, Australia on 23rd January 1788. A few days later, on the 26th January, the ship ’ s officers formally founded the modern nation of Australia. There are also two bronze plaques which show HMS Supply arriving in the bay, and the formal founding of the city by the officers on board.

The bust was not originally placed here but was relocated from St Mildred’s church having been rescued from the destroyed church during WWII. Nearby you have One New Change which offers a birds-eye view of St Paul’s but if you take a wander down Watling Street and turn right down Bow Lane not only do you get to experience a very pleasant neighbourhood but you end up at St Mary Aldermary .

Abchurch Yard

At a glance: Just off busy Cannon Street and a few minutes’ walk from The Monument, Abchurch Yard is the former churchyard of St Mary Abchurch. The first references to a church on this site can be found in the 12th century and there are still a few remains of the churchyard from the early years of the 13th century that are visible south of the church.

Site location: Abchurch Lane

Postcode: EC4N 7BA

Grid ref: TQ327809

Size in hectares: 0.0325

Type of site: Square

Date(s): 12th and 14th century, 1681-6; 1877

Designer(s): Edward I’Anson was responsible for the paving of the churchyard.

Listed structures: St Mary Abchurch

Site ownership: Diocese of London

Site management: City of London Corporation

Open to public? Yes

Opening times: The square is always open. The Church: Mon-Thur 10.30am-3pm; Fri 10.30am-12noon

Public transport - Tube Stations: Monument (District, Circle)/Bank (Central, DLR, Northern, Waterloo & City); Cannon Street (District, Circle) and National Rail.

Abchurch Map.png

Contains OS data © Crown copyright and database rights 2019

History: The etymology of St Mary Abchurch has various origins and could possibly have been named after a benefactor called Abbe or Abbo, or it could be a corruption of Upchurch with it standing on comparatively high ground.

A daughter chapel of what is now Southwark Cathedral (St Mary Overie), the first reference to the church is in the 12th century to 'Robert, the priest of Habechirck’.

A 14 th -century vaulted chamber was discovered beneath the churchyard after the bombings of WWII, which is believed to likely be the undercroft of a chapel.

St Mary Abchurch was badly damaged in the Great Fire and rebuilt by Sir Christopher Wren between 1681 and1686, and he might have moved the tower from south-west to its north-west position.

Back then the yard was an enclosed burial area and it remained that way through most of the 19th century until the Bishop of London sanctioned it to be opened up and paved over as a public space.

The church suffered bomb damage and was restored in 1945-57 with further restoration works occurring more recently.

The 1877 paving design by Edward I’Anson is still here with circular patterns in decorative paving stones and cobbles with seats by the wall of the church. Venture inside the church, and you can admire the splendid painting in the dome by William Snow with a representation of the Name of God in Hebrew.

Aldermanbury Square

At a glance: A lovely quiet spot not far from the old Roman barracks, where a century or two after the Romans left it is thought that the Anglo-Saxon Kings lived until Edward the Confessor established the Palace of Westminster.

Following substantial damage from the Blitz, Aldermanbury Square was drawn up in 1962 as part of the 1955 London Wall Plan. In 2006 it was again remodelled and it is now a traffic-free square complete with trees, public lighting, seats and even a water feature.

Site location: Aldermanbury Square

Postcode: EC2V 7HR

Grid ref: TQ324815

Size in hectares: 0.0306

Type of site: Square

Date(s): 1962 and 2000

Designer(s): Eric Parry Architects (2006)

Listed structures: None

Site ownership: City of London Corporation

Site management: Open Spaces Department

Open to public? Yes

Opening times: 24/7

Public transport - Tube Stations: Moorgate (Hammersmith & City, Circle, Northern, Metropolitan). National Rail: Moorgate

Aldermanbury Square.png