Postman's Park
Encyclopedia
Postman's Park is a park in central London
, a short distance north of St Paul's Cathedral
. Bordered by Little Britain
, Aldersgate Street, King Edward Street, and the site of the former head office of the General Post Office
(GPO), it is one of the largest parks in the City of London
, the walled city which gives its name to modern London. A shortage of space for burials in London meant that corpses were often laid on the ground and covered over with soil instead of being buried, and thus Postman's Park, built on the site of former burial grounds, is significantly elevated above the streets which surround it. It is best known as the location of the Memorial to Heroic Self Sacrifice.
Opened in 1880 on the site of the former churchyard
and burial ground
of St Botolph's Aldersgate church, it expanded over the next 20 years to incorporate the adjacent burial grounds of Christ Church Greyfriars
and St Leonard, Foster Lane
, as well as the site of housing demolished during the widening of Little Britain in 1880, the ownership of which became the subject of a lengthy dispute between the church authorities, the General Post Office, the Treasury
, and the City Parochial Foundation
. The park's name reflects its popularity amongst workers from the nearby GPO's headquarters.
In 1900, the park became the location for George Frederic Watts
's Memorial to Heroic Self Sacrifice, a memorial to ordinary people who died saving the lives of others and might otherwise have been forgotten, in the form of a loggia
and long wall housing ceramic memorial tablets. At the time of its opening, only four of the planned 120 memorial tablets were in place, with a further nine tablets added during Watts's lifetime. Following Watts's death in 1904, his wife Mary Watts
took over the management of the project and oversaw the installation of a further 35 memorial tablets in the following four years, as well as a small monument to Watts. However, disillusioned with the new tile manufacturer and with her time and money increasingly occupied by the running of the Watts Gallery
, Mary Watts lost interest in the project and only five further tablets were added during her lifetime.
In 1972, key elements of the park, including the Memorial to Heroic Self Sacrifice, were grade II listed to preserve their character. Following the 2004 film Closer, based on the 1997 play Closer
by Patrick Marber
, Postman's Park experienced a resurgence of interest; key scenes of both were set in the park itself. In June 2009 the Diocese of London
added a new tablet to the Memorial, the first new addition for 78 years.
, about 200 yards (182.9 m) north of St Paul's Cathedral
on Foster Lane
, was badly damaged in the 1666 Great Fire of London
, and was not considered to be worth the cost of rebuilding. Its parish was united with nearby Christ Church Greyfriars
, in an expanded church built by Sir Christopher Wren
; the incumbent vicar from that time onwards has held the joint titles of Vicar
of Christ Church Greyfriars and Rector
of St Leonard, Foster Lane. Although destroyed in 1666, the ruins of St Leonard, Foster Lane, were not cleared until the early 19th century.
Despite the unification of the parishes of Christ Church Greyfriars and St Leonard, Foster Lane, the churches continued to operate separate burial grounds. Christ Church Greyfriars' burial ground was a short distance northeast of the church, on the eastern side of King Edward Street, and St Leonard, Foster Lane's, was about 50 feet (15.2 m) further east.
Immediately outside the London Wall
at Aldersgate
, a short distance north of St Leonard, Foster Lane on Little Britain
, is the church of St Botolph's Aldersgate (sometimes referred to as "St Botolph Without Aldersgate", a reference to its position immediately outside the historic city gate). Although the original church, first mentioned in 1493, had survived the Great Fire, it was demolished between 1754 and 1757 and replaced in 1790 by the current building.
St Botolph's Aldersgate was a wealthy parish, having been granted the assets of the nearby Cluniac priory and hospital during the 16th-century Dissolution of the Monasteries
. The parish was historically a significant place of worship, possibly best known as the site of the evangelical conversions of John Wesley
and Charles Wesley
.
To the immediate southwest of the church building, St Botolph's Aldersgate owned an irregularly shaped churchyard
enclosed by Aldersgate Street to the east, the Christ Church Greyfriars burial ground to the west, housing and the burial ground of St Leonard, Foster Lane to the south and housing along Little Britain to the north. The churchyard was used as a burial ground and as a public open space. As with other City churchyards, as the amount of available burial space in London failed to keep pace with the growing population it came to be used exclusively as a burial ground.
Postman's Park has always been situated in the ward
of Aldersgate
. Its association with (and location within) that ward was reaffirmed in the most recent boundary review that took place in 2010; the ward boundary will be drawn around the southern edge of the park upon boundary changes effected in 2013.
The severe lack of burial space in London meant that graves would be frequently reused in London's burial grounds, and the difficulty of digging without disturbing existing graves led to bodies often simply being stacked on top of each other to fit the available space and covered with a layer of earth. Differing numbers of parishioners in each parish led to burial grounds being used at different rates, and by the mid 19th century, the ground level of the St Botolph's Aldersgate churchyard was 6 feet (1.8 m) above that of the Christ Church Greyfriars burial ground, and 4 feet (1.2 m) above that of the St Leonard, Foster Lane burial ground.
In 1831 and 1848, serious outbreaks of cholera
had overwhelmed the crowded cemeteries of London, causing bodies to be stacked in heaps awaiting burial, and even relatively recent graves to be exhumed to make way for new burials. Public health policy at this time was generally shaped by the miasma theory
, and the bad smells and risks of disease caused by piled bodies and exhumed rotting corpses caused great public concern.
A Royal Commission
established in 1842 to investigate the problem concluded that London's burial grounds were so overcrowded that it was impossible to dig a new grave without cutting through an existing one. Sir Edwin Chadwick
testified that each year, 20,000 adults and 30,000 children were being buried in less than 218 acre (0.88221548 km²) of already overcrowded burial grounds; the Commission heard that one cemetery, Spa Fields
in Clerkenwell
, designed to hold 1,000 bodies, contained 80,000 graves, and that gravediggers throughout London were obliged to shred bodies in order to cram the remains into available grave space.
had recently opened a short distance from London and temporarily became London's main burial grounds, and in 1849 the 2200 acres (8.9 km²) Brookwood Cemetery
in Brookwood, Surrey
, with space for 240,000 graves, was opened by the London Necropolis Company
. Connected to London by the London Necropolis Railway
in 1854, it was at the time the world's largest cemetery. It was projected that, on the basis of one body per grave with each grave being reused after 10 years, Brookwood Cemetery would suffice to house the dead of London forever.
With London's churchyards and burial grounds no longer used for new burials, in 1858 it was decided to convert the churchyard of St Botolph's Aldersgate to a public park. On 30 November 1858, the Churchwarden
s of St Botolph's Aldersgate announced that:
Progress in clearing and covering the burial ground was slow, and it was not until 28 October 1880 that the churchyard was reopened as a public park. Laid out with flower beds and gravel paths, the park became a popular place for local workers to spend breaks.
In 1887, the burial ground of Christ Church Greyfriars was given to the parish of St Botolph's Aldersgate. The burial ground was cleared and the ground level raised by 6 feet (1.8 m) to allow its incorporation into the new park. At this time, the burial ground of St Leonard, Foster Lane was also cleared and raised to integrate it with the new park, although it was not formally merged with the park until 1890.
A short distance south of the three burial grounds, on St. Martin's Le Grand
, was the site of a collegiate church
and sanctuary
founded in 750 by Withu, King of Kent
, expanded in 1056 by Ingebrian, Earl of Essex
and issued with a Royal Charter
in 1068 by William the Conqueror
. The site of the church was cleared in 1818 in preparation for the construction of a new headquarters and central sorting office
for the General Post Office
(GPO), which opened in 1829. In 1873 and 1895 the GPO building was greatly expanded in size, with the 1895 extension bordering the southern edge of the park itself. The park became extremely popular with workers in the GPO building, and soon became known as "Postman's Park".
Between the northern border of the former St Botolph's Aldersgate churchyard and Little Britain was a small, roughly triangular 300 square yards (250.8 m²) piece of land. The site of housing owned by the parish of St Botolph's Aldersgate and demolished during an 1880 widening of Little Britain, it had been incorporated into the new park. However, being owned by the parish, in 1891 ownership was formally passed to the newly formed City Parochial Foundation
(CPF), which felt itself obliged under charity law to maximise its income from the land. In October 1896, the CPF fenced off the land from the rest of the park, and announced that it intended to lease the land for building purposes, unless the authorities were willing to purchase the land for £12,000 (about £ as of ).
The City of London had few open spaces, and the proposal to build on the north of the park was extremely unpopular with local residents, workers and social reformers. Henry Fitzalan-Howard
, the Postmaster-General, persuaded the Government to contribute £5,000 towards the cost, and the clergy of St Botolph's Aldersgate launched an appeal in The Times
for the remaining funds.
Reginald Brabazon, 12th Earl of Meath
, founder and Chairman of the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association (MPGA), decided to put the weight of his organisation behind the campaign, and through a combination of public donations and donations from the London County Council
, Corporation of London and Kyrle Society, raised the remaining £7,000 in less than six months. At this point a dispute broke out over who would be responsible for the maintenance of the park. The £5,000 offer from the Treasury was conditional upon the CPF reassigning to the Post Office the £200 annual maintenance grant that it currently gave to St Botolph's Aldersgate; the CPF maintained that it was happy to do so on condition that the Post Office maintain the park in place of St Botolph's Aldersgate, but that the Post Office was unwilling to do so. With all parties unable to agree on responsibility for maintenance, on 19 February 1898 the Treasury withdrew its offer altogether, leaving the appeal £5,000 short.
In the wake of the Treasury's withdrawal of funding, in May 1898 the churchwardens of St Botolph's Aldersgate brokered a compromise with the CPF. The disputed site was split into two parts, each priced at £6,000. The western section would be purchased immediately using £6,000 of the £7,000 already raised, with an option to purchase the eastern section if the remaining £5,000 could be raised within two years, after which the CPF would go ahead with building plans if the money could not be raised.
As before, the MPGA supported and assisted the new fundraising campaign. However, although the campaign was initially boosted by a £1,000 donation from Octavia Hill
, fundraising was slow, and by October 1898 only £2,000 had been raised. The churchwardens and the MPGA began to consider ideas for initiatives which would publicise the campaign and provide a reason to justify preserving the whole of the park.
Painter and sculptor George Frederic Watts
and his second wife Mary Fraser Tytler
had long been advocates of the idea of art as a force for social change. Watts had painted a series of portraits of those figures he considered to be a positive social influence, the "Hall of Fame", which was donated to the National Portrait Gallery. As the son of a piano maker, who reportedly despised the wealthy and powerful and twice refused a baronet
cy, Watts had long considered a national monument to the bravery of ordinary people. In August 1866, he suggested to his patron Charles Rickards that he "erect a great statue to Unknown Worth", and proposed erecting a colossal bronze figure. Unable to secure funds, the memorial remained unrealised.
On 5 September 1887, a letter was published in The Times from Watts, proposing a scheme to commemorate the Golden Jubilee
of Queen Victoria
. Entitled "Another Jubilee Suggestion", Watts proposed to "collect a complete record of the stories of heroism in every-day life". Watts cited the case of Alice Ayres
, a servant who, trapped in a burning house, gave up the chance to jump to safety, instead first throwing a mattress out of the window to cushion the fall, before running back into the house three times to fetch her employer's children and throwing them out of a window onto the mattress to safety before herself being overcome by fumes and falling out of the window to her death.
Watts by this stage had abandoned the idea of a colossal bronze figure, and proposed "a kind of Campo Santo
", consisting of a covered way and marble wall inscribed with the names of everyday heroes, to be built in Hyde Park
. Despite an offer of funding from John Passmore Edwards
, Watts's suggestion was not taken up, leading Watts to comment that "if I had proposed a race course round Hyde Park, there would have been plenty of sympathisers". Watts continued to lobby for such a memorial, with both himself and Mary Watts redrafting their wills to leave the bulk of their estate to the purpose, and considered selling his home, New Little Holland House, to finance the project.
The MPGA were not consulted about the proposal, and the following week Lord Meath wrote to The Times and the City Press
to complain about the scheme. He argued that the MPGA had devoted large amounts of time and money to prevent the park from being built on, and that while Watts's proposal was "worthy of all encouragement and support", Postman's Park, at less than an acre and surrounded by tall buildings, was an inappropriate site. The three-sided design was abandoned, in favour of a 50 feet (15.2 m) long and 9 feet (2.7 m) tall wooden loggia
with a tiled roof, designed by Ernest George
. The supporting wall contained space for 120 memorial tablets. St Botolph's Aldersgate secured the necessary funds to complete the purchase of the CPF land, and Watts agreed to pay the £700 (about £ as of ) construction costs himself.
Work began in 1899, and on 30 July 1900 the newly reunified park and Watts's Memorial to Heroic Self Sacrifice (also known as the Wall of Heroes) were unveiled by Alfred Newton, Lord Mayor of London, and Mandell Creighton
, Bishop of London
. A short service was held in St Botolph's Aldersgate, after which a short speech was given by Creighton in which he observed that:
Watts himself, by now 83 years old, was too ill to attend the ceremony, and was represented by Mary Watts.
s. Watts was an acquaintance of William De Morgan
, at that time one of the world's leading tile designers, and consequently found them easier and cheaper to obtain than engraved stone. The four initial memorial tablets, installed for the unveiling, each consisted of two large custom-made tiles, with each tablet costing £3 5s (about £ as of ) to produce. Only four tablets were installed by the time of the unveiling ceremony, and Watts already had concerns about the potential costs of installing the 120 tablets envisaged in the memorial's design.
Costs were allayed by using standard 6 inches (15.2 cm) tiles for the next set of tablets, reducing the costs to a more manageable £2 per tablet. In 1902, nine further tablets were installed, intermittently spaced along the central of the five rows, including the memorial to Alice Ayres for which Watts had lobbied.
The subjects of the 13 initial tiles had been personally selected by Watts, who had for many years maintained a list of newspaper reports of heroic actions potentially worthy of recognition. However, by this time he was in his eighties and in increasingly poor health, and in January 1904 the vicar and churchwardens of St Botolph's Aldersgate formed the Humble Heroes Memorial Committee to oversee the completion of the project, agreeing to defer to Watts regarding additions to the memorial. Watts strenuously objected to the name, as "not being applicable to anything as splendid as heroic self-sacrifice", and the committee was renamed the "Heroic Self Sacrifice Memorial Committee".
On 1 July 1904 George Frederic Watts died at New Little Holland House, aged 87. He was hailed "The last great Victorian", and a memorial service was held in St Paul's Cathedral, 300 yards (274.3 m) south of Postman's Park, on 7 July 1904.
On 11 July 1904 Mary Watts wrote to the Heroic Self Sacrifice Memorial Committee, stating that she intended to complete the memorial and offering to select 35 names from Watts's list of names and to raise the £62 (about £ as of ) necessary to finance the completion of the first two rows of tablets. Mary Watts selected eleven names to complete the first row, and De Morgan provided the tiles in October 1905. Unfortunately, five of the tiles were damaged during shipping and needed to be replaced.
Henry Gamble and Mary Watts also commissioned a memorial plaque from T. H. Wren, a student of the school of arts and crafts established by Watts in Compton. The relief
plaque depicts Watts holding a scroll marked "Heroes", and is captioned "The utmost for the highest" and "In memorial of George Frederic Watts, who desiring to honour heroic self-sacrifice placed these records here". Eventually on 13 December 1905, the eleven tiles and Wren's memorial to Watts, placed in the centre of the monument, were unveiled by Arthur Winnington-Ingram
, Bishop of London, completing the first row of tiles.
With the first row of tablets complete, Mary Watts and the Heroic Self Sacrifice Memorial Committee decided to complete the next row as soon as possible. The Committee selected 24 names, 22 proposed by Watts before his death and two from press reports of 1905, and De Morgan was duly commissioned to produce the new set of tablets.
It transpired that the only manufacturer able to supply suitable tiles was Royal Doulton
, although they were unable or unwilling to replicate De Morgan's designs, and they were duly commissioned to manufacture the 24 tiles, delivered in May 1908. Mary Watts was unhappy with the design of the tiles, which were significantly different in colour and appearance from De Morgan's original tiles, and they were installed without ceremony on 21 August 1908, immediately below De Morgan's original row of tiles.
In 1905 the Heroic Self Sacrifice Memorial Committee had suggested to Mary Watts that public funds be raised to complete the memorial, but she objected and promised to complete the 120 tablets at her own cost or provide funds in her will to do so. However, in 1910 she told the Committee that she was unable to fund the project, as she was devoting her time and money to the Watts Mortuary Chapel
and the Watts Gallery
in Compton. Work to fill the three empty rows of the memorial was abandoned.
Alfred Smith, an officer of the Metropolitan Police
, was patrolling Central Street in Finsbury
, approximately 900 yards (823 m) directly north of Postman's Park. At about noon, fifteen German aircraft began a bombing raid
, devastating the area. Around 150 women and girls working in the nearby Debenhams
factory panicked in the explosions, and ran out into the street while the air raid was still in progress. PC Smith and the manager of the factory shepherded them back to safety in the building, but Smith was caught by the blast of one of the bombs and died.
Following Smith's death J. Allen Baker
, Member of Parliament
for Finsbury East
, launched a public fund to support Smith's widow and young son and to provide a suitable memorial to him, raising a total of £471 14s 2d
(about £ as of ). On 13 June 1919, two years to the day after Smith's death, a memorial tablet to Smith made by Royal Doulton was unveiled at the start of the empty row directly above De Morgan's original tiles.
After the addition of Smith's memorial tablet, no further changes were made to the memorial in the years following the First World War. Although Mary Watts had always been opposed to the idea of a public subscription, in 1927 T. H. Ellis, Parish Clerk of St Botolph's Aldersgate, approached her to propose public fundraising to complete the memorial. Mary Watts agreed and an appeal was launched in May 1929, aiming to raise funds to repair and restore the by now run-down loggia, and to install additional tablets. By this time Watts's work was out of fashion, and the appeal was not as successful as was hoped, raising only £250 (about £ as of ). Of this total £30 was spent on the restoration of the loggia, leaving £220 for placing future tablets.
Disliking Royal Doulton's tiling designs, and with her time and money increasingly devoted to the maintenance of the Watts Gallery, Mary Watts by now was losing interest in the memorial and by 1930 had handed complete control to the Heroic Self Sacrifice Memorial Committee. Neither Mary Watts nor the Committee had added new names to the list originally proposed by Watts, and thus there were no proposed names more recent than 1904, with the vast majority dating back to the 19th century. The Committee decided that rather than use these by now dated records, they would request suggestions from relevant public bodies. The British Medical Association
was asked to suggest brave medical professionals, the Metropolitan Police Service
to suggest brave police officers, and, in light of the park's name, the General Post Office was asked to suggest heroic postal workers. The Metropolitan Police suggested the names of three officers who had died while rescuing others, and on 15 October 1930 tablets to the three officers, manufactured by Royal Doulton to a similar design to their previous tablets, were added to the second row and unveiled by Postmaster-General Hastings Lees-Smith
in a ceremony also commemorating the 50th anniversary of the opening of the park, attended by Mary Watts and many police officers and relatives of those being commemorated.
At this time, one of De Morgan's 1902 tablets was removed. Commemorating four workers who had died in an accident at the East Ham
Sewage Works in 1895, Watts had mistakenly listed the incident as having taken place at the West Ham Sewage Works in 1885. The De Morgan tablet was removed and replaced with a Royal Doulton tablet giving the correct location and date. As the Doulton tablets were in such a different style to De Morgan's, the replacement tablet was installed in the second row next to the three new tablets to police officers, rather than in the space left by the original.
Mary Watts died in 1938, and was buried alongside George Frederic Watts near the Watts Mortuary Chapel, which she had herself designed and built in Compton in 1901. Following her death, and with both George and Mary Watts increasingly out of fashion, the memorial was abandoned half-finished, with only 52 of the intended 120 spaces filled. In the years following Mary Watts's death there were occasional proposals to add new names to complete the memorial, but the Watts Gallery was hostile to the plans, considering the monument in its unfinished state to be a symbol of the Watts's values and beliefs, and that its status as a historic record of its time is what makes it of value in the present day.
The nave of Christ Church Greyfriars was destroyed by bombing on 29 December 1940. By then the decline in the population of the City of London had reduced the congregation to less than 80, and the parishes of St Leonard, Foster Lane and Christ Church Greyfriars were merged with nearby St Sepulchre-without-Newgate
. Although parts of the ruins were cleared during a widening of King Edward Street after the Second World War, the remains of the nave of Christ Church Greyfriars became a public memorial in 1989; the tower is now office space.
St Botolph's Aldersgate remains open as a functioning church. Unusually for an English church, because of its location in a now mainly commercial area with few local residents, services are held on Tuesdays instead of the more traditional Sundays. On 4 January 1950, St Botolph's Aldersgate and the surviving ruins of Christ Church Greyfriars were both designated Grade I listed buildings.
In 1934, a statue of Sir Robert Peel
erected in Cheapside
in 1855 was declared an obstruction to traffic and removed. A proposal that it be installed in front of the Bank of England
fell through, and in 1952 it was erected in Postman's Park. In 1971 the Metropolitan Police requested that the statue be moved to the new Peel Centre
police training complex, and the Corporation of London agreed. In place of Peel's statue, a large bronze sculpture of the Minotaur
by Michael Ayrton
was unveiled in 1973. Dominating the small park, in 1997 the Minotaur sculpture was moved to a new position on the raised walkway above London Wall
.
On 5 June 1972, the western entrance of Postman's Park and the elaborate Gothic drinking fountain attached to the railings were Grade II listed, protecting them from further development. At this time, the Memorial to Heroic Self Sacrifice itself was also Grade II listed; although considered of little architectural merit, the register notes that it is "listed as a curiosity".
Postman's Park came to increased public notice in 2004 with the release of the BAFTA
- and Golden Globe
-winning film Closer
, which stars Natalie Portman
, Julia Roberts
, Jude Law
and Clive Owen
, and is based on the 1997 play Closer
by Patrick Marber
. A key plot element in the film revolves around Postman's Park, in which it is revealed that the character Alice Ayres (played by Portman in the film) has in fact fabricated her identity based on Ayres's tablet on the Memorial to Heroic Self Sacrifice, which she had read at the time of her first meeting with Dan Woolf (Jude Law) at the start of the film.
. His colleagues and fiancée Hema Shah approached the Diocese of London to suggest that Pitt would make a suitable addition to the memorial, and despite previous opposition from the Watts Gallery to proposals to complete the memorial, on 11 June 2009 a memorial to Pitt was added to the Memorial to Heroic Self Sacrifice, the first new tablet added to the memorial since that of Herbert Maconoghu 78 years earlier. A spokesman for the Diocese of London said that the Diocese would now consider suitable names to be added to the memorial in future.
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, a short distance north of St Paul's Cathedral
St Paul's Cathedral
St Paul's Cathedral, London, is a Church of England cathedral and seat of the Bishop of London. Its dedication to Paul the Apostle dates back to the original church on this site, founded in AD 604. St Paul's sits at the top of Ludgate Hill, the highest point in the City of London, and is the mother...
. Bordered by Little Britain
Little Britain, London
Little Britain is a street in the City of London running from St. Martin's Le Grand in the east to West Smithfield in the west. It is the northern boundary of St Bartholomew's Hospital and is situated in the Aldersgate and Farringdon Within wards. Postman's Park is situated by Little...
, Aldersgate Street, King Edward Street, and the site of the former head office of the General Post Office
General Post Office
General Post Office is the name of the British postal system from 1660 until 1969.General Post Office may also refer to:* General Post Office, Perth* General Post Office, Sydney* General Post Office, Melbourne* General Post Office, Brisbane...
(GPO), it is one of the largest parks in the City of London
City of London
The City of London is a small area within Greater London, England. It is the historic core of London around which the modern conurbation grew and has held city status since time immemorial. The City’s boundaries have remained almost unchanged since the Middle Ages, and it is now only a tiny part of...
, the walled city which gives its name to modern London. A shortage of space for burials in London meant that corpses were often laid on the ground and covered over with soil instead of being buried, and thus Postman's Park, built on the site of former burial grounds, is significantly elevated above the streets which surround it. It is best known as the location of the Memorial to Heroic Self Sacrifice.
Opened in 1880 on the site of the former churchyard
Churchyard
A churchyard is a patch of land adjoining or surrounding a church which is usually owned by the relevant church or local parish itself. In the Scots language or Northern English language this can also be known as a kirkyard or kirkyaird....
and burial ground
Burial Ground
Burial Ground is the ninth studio album by Swedish death metal band Grave, released in June 2010.-Track listing:# "Liberation" - 3:40# "Semblance In Black" - 7:50# "Dismembered Mind" - 6:10# "Ridden With Belief" - 7:57# "Conquerer" - 4:44...
of St Botolph's Aldersgate church, it expanded over the next 20 years to incorporate the adjacent burial grounds of Christ Church Greyfriars
Christ Church Greyfriars
Christ Church Greyfriars, also known as Christ Church Newgate, was an Anglican church located on Newgate Street, opposite St Paul's Cathedral in the City of London. Built first in the gothic style, then in the English Baroque style by Sir Christopher Wren, it ranked among the City's most notable...
and St Leonard, Foster Lane
St Leonard, Foster Lane
St Leonard, Foster Lane was a church of England church dedicated to St Leonard on Foster Lane in the City of London. It was located near St Vedast Foster Lane....
, as well as the site of housing demolished during the widening of Little Britain in 1880, the ownership of which became the subject of a lengthy dispute between the church authorities, the General Post Office, the Treasury
HM Treasury
HM Treasury, in full Her Majesty's Treasury, informally The Treasury, is the United Kingdom government department responsible for developing and executing the British government's public finance policy and economic policy...
, and the City Parochial Foundation
City Parochial Foundation
City Parochial Foundation , which in 2010 changed its name to Trust for London, is an independent charitable foundation established in 1891. It aims to tackle poverty and inequality in London and its root causes....
. The park's name reflects its popularity amongst workers from the nearby GPO's headquarters.
In 1900, the park became the location for George Frederic Watts
George Frederic Watts
George Frederic Watts, OM was a popular English Victorian painter and sculptor associated with the Symbolist movement. Watts became famous in his lifetime for his allegorical works, such as Hope and Love and Life...
's Memorial to Heroic Self Sacrifice, a memorial to ordinary people who died saving the lives of others and might otherwise have been forgotten, in the form of a loggia
Loggia
Loggia is the name given to an architectural feature, originally of Minoan design. They are often a gallery or corridor at ground level, sometimes higher, on the facade of a building and open to the air on one side, where it is supported by columns or pierced openings in the wall...
and long wall housing ceramic memorial tablets. At the time of its opening, only four of the planned 120 memorial tablets were in place, with a further nine tablets added during Watts's lifetime. Following Watts's death in 1904, his wife Mary Watts
Mary Fraser Tytler
Mary Seton Fraser Tytler was a symbolist craftswoman, designer and social reformer.-Biography:...
took over the management of the project and oversaw the installation of a further 35 memorial tablets in the following four years, as well as a small monument to Watts. However, disillusioned with the new tile manufacturer and with her time and money increasingly occupied by the running of the Watts Gallery
Watts Gallery
Watts Gallery is an art gallery in the village of Compton, near Guildford in Surrey. It is dedicated to the work of Victorian era painter and sculptor George Frederic Watts....
, Mary Watts lost interest in the project and only five further tablets were added during her lifetime.
In 1972, key elements of the park, including the Memorial to Heroic Self Sacrifice, were grade II listed to preserve their character. Following the 2004 film Closer, based on the 1997 play Closer
Closer (play)
Closer is the third play written by English playwright Patrick Marber. The play was premiered at the Royal National Theatre's Cottesloe Theatre in London in 1997, and made its North American debut at the Music Box Theatre on Broadway on 25 January 1999....
by Patrick Marber
Patrick Marber
Patrick Albert Crispin Marber is an English comedian, playwright, director, puppeteer, actor and screenwriter.-Early life and education:...
, Postman's Park experienced a resurgence of interest; key scenes of both were set in the park itself. In June 2009 the Diocese of London
Diocese of London
The Anglican Diocese of London forms part of the Province of Canterbury in England.Historically the diocese covered a large area north of the Thames and bordered the dioceses of Norwich and Lincoln to the north and west. The present diocese covers and 17 London boroughs, covering most of Greater...
added a new tablet to the Memorial, the first new addition for 78 years.
Historical background
The 13th-century church of St Leonard, Foster LaneSt Leonard, Foster Lane
St Leonard, Foster Lane was a church of England church dedicated to St Leonard on Foster Lane in the City of London. It was located near St Vedast Foster Lane....
, about 200 yards (182.9 m) north of St Paul's Cathedral
St Paul's Cathedral
St Paul's Cathedral, London, is a Church of England cathedral and seat of the Bishop of London. Its dedication to Paul the Apostle dates back to the original church on this site, founded in AD 604. St Paul's sits at the top of Ludgate Hill, the highest point in the City of London, and is the mother...
on Foster Lane
Foster Lane
Foster Lane is a short street within Cheap Ward, in the City of London. It is situated north-east of St Paul’s Cathedral and runs northwards from Cheapside to a junction with Gresham Street....
, was badly damaged in the 1666 Great Fire of London
Great Fire of London
The Great Fire of London was a major conflagration that swept through the central parts of the English city of London, from Sunday, 2 September to Wednesday, 5 September 1666. The fire gutted the medieval City of London inside the old Roman City Wall...
, and was not considered to be worth the cost of rebuilding. Its parish was united with nearby Christ Church Greyfriars
Christ Church Greyfriars
Christ Church Greyfriars, also known as Christ Church Newgate, was an Anglican church located on Newgate Street, opposite St Paul's Cathedral in the City of London. Built first in the gothic style, then in the English Baroque style by Sir Christopher Wren, it ranked among the City's most notable...
, in an expanded church built by Sir Christopher Wren
Christopher Wren
Sir Christopher Wren FRS is one of the most highly acclaimed English architects in history.He used to be accorded responsibility for rebuilding 51 churches in the City of London after the Great Fire in 1666, including his masterpiece, St. Paul's Cathedral, on Ludgate Hill, completed in 1710...
; the incumbent vicar from that time onwards has held the joint titles of Vicar
Vicar
In the broadest sense, a vicar is a representative, deputy or substitute; anyone acting "in the person of" or agent for a superior . In this sense, the title is comparable to lieutenant...
of Christ Church Greyfriars and Rector
Rector
The word rector has a number of different meanings; it is widely used to refer to an academic, religious or political administrator...
of St Leonard, Foster Lane. Although destroyed in 1666, the ruins of St Leonard, Foster Lane, were not cleared until the early 19th century.
Despite the unification of the parishes of Christ Church Greyfriars and St Leonard, Foster Lane, the churches continued to operate separate burial grounds. Christ Church Greyfriars' burial ground was a short distance northeast of the church, on the eastern side of King Edward Street, and St Leonard, Foster Lane's, was about 50 feet (15.2 m) further east.
London Wall
London Wall was the defensive wall first built by the Romans around Londinium, their strategically important port town on the River Thames in what is now the United Kingdom, and subsequently maintained until the 18th century. It is now the name of a road in the City of London running along part of...
at Aldersgate
Aldersgate
Aldersgate was a gate in the London Wall in the City of London, which has given its name to a ward and Aldersgate Street, a road leading north from the site of the gate, towards Clerkenwell in the London Borough of Islington.-History:...
, a short distance north of St Leonard, Foster Lane on Little Britain
Little Britain, London
Little Britain is a street in the City of London running from St. Martin's Le Grand in the east to West Smithfield in the west. It is the northern boundary of St Bartholomew's Hospital and is situated in the Aldersgate and Farringdon Within wards. Postman's Park is situated by Little...
, is the church of St Botolph's Aldersgate (sometimes referred to as "St Botolph Without Aldersgate", a reference to its position immediately outside the historic city gate). Although the original church, first mentioned in 1493, had survived the Great Fire, it was demolished between 1754 and 1757 and replaced in 1790 by the current building.
St Botolph's Aldersgate was a wealthy parish, having been granted the assets of the nearby Cluniac priory and hospital during the 16th-century Dissolution of the Monasteries
Dissolution of the Monasteries
The Dissolution of the Monasteries, sometimes referred to as the Suppression of the Monasteries, was the set of administrative and legal processes between 1536 and 1541 by which Henry VIII disbanded monasteries, priories, convents and friaries in England, Wales and Ireland; appropriated their...
. The parish was historically a significant place of worship, possibly best known as the site of the evangelical conversions of John Wesley
John Wesley
John Wesley was a Church of England cleric and Christian theologian. Wesley is largely credited, along with his brother Charles Wesley, as founding the Methodist movement which began when he took to open-air preaching in a similar manner to George Whitefield...
and Charles Wesley
Charles Wesley
Charles Wesley was an English leader of the Methodist movement, son of Anglican clergyman and poet Samuel Wesley, the younger brother of Anglican clergyman John Wesley and Anglican clergyman Samuel Wesley , and father of musician Samuel Wesley, and grandfather of musician Samuel Sebastian Wesley...
.
To the immediate southwest of the church building, St Botolph's Aldersgate owned an irregularly shaped churchyard
Churchyard
A churchyard is a patch of land adjoining or surrounding a church which is usually owned by the relevant church or local parish itself. In the Scots language or Northern English language this can also be known as a kirkyard or kirkyaird....
enclosed by Aldersgate Street to the east, the Christ Church Greyfriars burial ground to the west, housing and the burial ground of St Leonard, Foster Lane to the south and housing along Little Britain to the north. The churchyard was used as a burial ground and as a public open space. As with other City churchyards, as the amount of available burial space in London failed to keep pace with the growing population it came to be used exclusively as a burial ground.
Postman's Park has always been situated in the ward
Wards of the City of London
The City of London , in the United Kingdom, is constituted of 25 wards. The City is the historic core of the much wider metropolis of London, with an ancient and sui generis form of local government, which avoided the many reforms enacted to local government elsewhere in the country in the 19th and...
of Aldersgate
Aldersgate
Aldersgate was a gate in the London Wall in the City of London, which has given its name to a ward and Aldersgate Street, a road leading north from the site of the gate, towards Clerkenwell in the London Borough of Islington.-History:...
. Its association with (and location within) that ward was reaffirmed in the most recent boundary review that took place in 2010; the ward boundary will be drawn around the southern edge of the park upon boundary changes effected in 2013.
Closure of London's burial grounds
In 1831 and 1848, serious outbreaks of cholera
Cholera
Cholera is an infection of the small intestine that is caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. The main symptoms are profuse watery diarrhea and vomiting. Transmission occurs primarily by drinking or eating water or food that has been contaminated by the diarrhea of an infected person or the feces...
had overwhelmed the crowded cemeteries of London, causing bodies to be stacked in heaps awaiting burial, and even relatively recent graves to be exhumed to make way for new burials. Public health policy at this time was generally shaped by the miasma theory
Miasma theory of disease
The miasma theory held that diseases such as cholera, chlamydia or the Black Death were caused by a miasma , a noxious form of "bad air"....
, and the bad smells and risks of disease caused by piled bodies and exhumed rotting corpses caused great public concern.
A Royal Commission
Royal Commission
In Commonwealth realms and other monarchies a Royal Commission is a major ad-hoc formal public inquiry into a defined issue. They have been held in various countries such as the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and Saudi Arabia...
established in 1842 to investigate the problem concluded that London's burial grounds were so overcrowded that it was impossible to dig a new grave without cutting through an existing one. Sir Edwin Chadwick
Edwin Chadwick
Sir Edwin Chadwick KCB was an English social reformer, noted for his work to reform the Poor Laws and improve sanitary conditions and public health...
testified that each year, 20,000 adults and 30,000 children were being buried in less than 218 acre (0.88221548 km²) of already overcrowded burial grounds; the Commission heard that one cemetery, Spa Fields
Spa Fields
Spa Fields is a park, and surrounding area, in the London Borough of Islington in London, bordering Finsbury and Clerkenwell. Historically it is known for the Spa Fields riots of 1816 and an Owenite community which existed there between 1821 and 1824...
in Clerkenwell
Clerkenwell
Clerkenwell is an area of central London in the London Borough of Islington. From 1900 to 1965 it was part of the Metropolitan Borough of Finsbury. The well after which it was named was rediscovered in 1924. The watchmaking and watch repairing trades were once of great importance...
, designed to hold 1,000 bodies, contained 80,000 graves, and that gravediggers throughout London were obliged to shred bodies in order to cram the remains into available grave space.
The Burials Act 1851
In the wake of public concerns following the cholera epidemics and the findings of the Royal Commission, the Act to Amend the Laws Concerning the Burial of the Dead in the Metropolis (Burials Act) was passed in 1851. Under the Burials Act, new burials were prohibited in what were then the built-up areas of London. Seven large cemeteriesMagnificent Seven, London
The "Magnificent Seven" is an informal term applied to seven large cemeteries in London. They were established in the 19th century to alleviate overcrowding in existing parish burial grounds.-Background:...
had recently opened a short distance from London and temporarily became London's main burial grounds, and in 1849 the 2200 acres (8.9 km²) Brookwood Cemetery
Brookwood Cemetery
Brookwood Cemetery is a burial ground in Brookwood, Surrey, England. It is the largest cemetery in the United Kingdom and one of the largest in western Europe.-History:...
in Brookwood, Surrey
Brookwood, Surrey
Brookwood is a village in Surrey, located about 5 km west of Woking, in a semi-rural location. It lies on the western border of the Woking Borough ....
, with space for 240,000 graves, was opened by the London Necropolis Company
London Necropolis Company
The London Necropolis Company , formally the London Necropolis & National Mausoleum Company until 1927, was a cemetery operator established by Act of Parliament in 1852 in reaction to the crisis caused by the closure of London's graveyards in 1851. The LNC intended to establish a single cemetery...
. Connected to London by the London Necropolis Railway
London Necropolis Railway
The London Necropolis Railway was a railway line opened in November 1854 by the London Necropolis Company , to carry cadavers and mourners between London and the LNC's newly opened Brookwood Cemetery southwest of London in Brookwood, Surrey...
in 1854, it was at the time the world's largest cemetery. It was projected that, on the basis of one body per grave with each grave being reused after 10 years, Brookwood Cemetery would suffice to house the dead of London forever.
Churchwarden
A churchwarden is a lay official in a parish church or congregation of the Anglican Communion, usually working as a part-time volunteer. Holders of these positions are ex officio members of the parish board, usually called a vestry, parish council, parochial church council, or in the case of a...
s of St Botolph's Aldersgate announced that:
Opening of the public park
In 1887, the burial ground of Christ Church Greyfriars was given to the parish of St Botolph's Aldersgate. The burial ground was cleared and the ground level raised by 6 feet (1.8 m) to allow its incorporation into the new park. At this time, the burial ground of St Leonard, Foster Lane was also cleared and raised to integrate it with the new park, although it was not formally merged with the park until 1890.
A short distance south of the three burial grounds, on St. Martin's Le Grand
St. Martin's Le Grand
St Martin’s le Grand is a street and former liberty in the City of London between Newgate Street and Cheapside to the south and Aldersgate Street and London Wall to the north. To the east of the road once stood the collegiate church and monastic precinct of St Martin's, of ancient origin...
, was the site of a collegiate church
Collegiate church
In Christianity, a collegiate church is a church where the daily office of worship is maintained by a college of canons; a non-monastic, or "secular" community of clergy, organised as a self-governing corporate body, which may be presided over by a dean or provost...
and sanctuary
Sanctuary
A sanctuary is any place of safety. They may be categorized into human and non-human .- Religious sanctuary :A religious sanctuary can be a sacred place , or a consecrated area of a church or temple around its tabernacle or altar.- Sanctuary as a sacred place :#Sanctuary as a sacred place:#:In...
founded in 750 by Withu, King of Kent
Kingdom of Kent
The Kingdom of Kent was a Jutish colony and later independent kingdom in what is now south east England. It was founded at an unknown date in the 5th century by Jutes, members of a Germanic people from continental Europe, some of whom settled in Britain after the withdrawal of the Romans...
, expanded in 1056 by Ingebrian, Earl of Essex
Essex
Essex is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East region of England, and one of the home counties. It is located to the northeast of Greater London. It borders with Cambridgeshire and Suffolk to the north, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent to the South and London to the south west...
and issued with a Royal Charter
Royal Charter
A royal charter is a formal document issued by a monarch as letters patent, granting a right or power to an individual or a body corporate. They were, and are still, used to establish significant organizations such as cities or universities. Charters should be distinguished from warrants and...
in 1068 by William the Conqueror
William I of England
William I , also known as William the Conqueror , was the first Norman King of England from Christmas 1066 until his death. He was also Duke of Normandy from 3 July 1035 until his death, under the name William II...
. The site of the church was cleared in 1818 in preparation for the construction of a new headquarters and central sorting office
Sorting office
Sorting office or Processing and Distribution Center is any location where postal operators bring mail after collection for sorting into batches for delivery to the addressee, which may be a direct delivery or sent onwards to another regional or local sorting office, or to another postal...
for the General Post Office
General Post Office
General Post Office is the name of the British postal system from 1660 until 1969.General Post Office may also refer to:* General Post Office, Perth* General Post Office, Sydney* General Post Office, Melbourne* General Post Office, Brisbane...
(GPO), which opened in 1829. In 1873 and 1895 the GPO building was greatly expanded in size, with the 1895 extension bordering the southern edge of the park itself. The park became extremely popular with workers in the GPO building, and soon became known as "Postman's Park".
The City Parochial Foundation and the north of the park
City Parochial Foundation
City Parochial Foundation , which in 2010 changed its name to Trust for London, is an independent charitable foundation established in 1891. It aims to tackle poverty and inequality in London and its root causes....
(CPF), which felt itself obliged under charity law to maximise its income from the land. In October 1896, the CPF fenced off the land from the rest of the park, and announced that it intended to lease the land for building purposes, unless the authorities were willing to purchase the land for £12,000 (about £ as of ).
The City of London had few open spaces, and the proposal to build on the north of the park was extremely unpopular with local residents, workers and social reformers. Henry Fitzalan-Howard
Henry Fitzalan-Howard, 15th Duke of Norfolk
Henry Fitzalan-Howard, 15th Duke of Norfolk, , styled Baron Maltravers until 1856 and Earl of Arundel and Surrey between 1856 and 1860, was a British Unionist politician and philanthropist...
, the Postmaster-General, persuaded the Government to contribute £5,000 towards the cost, and the clergy of St Botolph's Aldersgate launched an appeal in The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
for the remaining funds.
Reginald Brabazon, 12th Earl of Meath
Reginald Brabazon, 12th Earl of Meath
Reginald Brabazon, 12th Earl of Meath KP GCVO GBE PC was a British politician and philanthropist.The Honourable Reginald Brabazon was born in London, second son of Lord Brabazon. When his father succeeded as 11th Earl of Meath in 1851, Reginald, now heir , was styled Lord Brabazon...
, founder and Chairman of the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association (MPGA), decided to put the weight of his organisation behind the campaign, and through a combination of public donations and donations from the London County Council
London County Council
London County Council was the principal local government body for the County of London, throughout its 1889–1965 existence, and the first London-wide general municipal authority to be directly elected. It covered the area today known as Inner London and was replaced by the Greater London Council...
, Corporation of London and Kyrle Society, raised the remaining £7,000 in less than six months. At this point a dispute broke out over who would be responsible for the maintenance of the park. The £5,000 offer from the Treasury was conditional upon the CPF reassigning to the Post Office the £200 annual maintenance grant that it currently gave to St Botolph's Aldersgate; the CPF maintained that it was happy to do so on condition that the Post Office maintain the park in place of St Botolph's Aldersgate, but that the Post Office was unwilling to do so. With all parties unable to agree on responsibility for maintenance, on 19 February 1898 the Treasury withdrew its offer altogether, leaving the appeal £5,000 short.
In the wake of the Treasury's withdrawal of funding, in May 1898 the churchwardens of St Botolph's Aldersgate brokered a compromise with the CPF. The disputed site was split into two parts, each priced at £6,000. The western section would be purchased immediately using £6,000 of the £7,000 already raised, with an option to purchase the eastern section if the remaining £5,000 could be raised within two years, after which the CPF would go ahead with building plans if the money could not be raised.
As before, the MPGA supported and assisted the new fundraising campaign. However, although the campaign was initially boosted by a £1,000 donation from Octavia Hill
Octavia Hill
Octavia Hill was an English social reformer, whose main concern was the welfare of the inhabitants of cities, especially London, in the second half of the nineteenth century. Born into a family with a strong commitment to alleviating poverty, she herself grew up in straitened circumstances owing...
, fundraising was slow, and by October 1898 only £2,000 had been raised. The churchwardens and the MPGA began to consider ideas for initiatives which would publicise the campaign and provide a reason to justify preserving the whole of the park.
George Frederic Watts's memorial proposals
George Frederic Watts
George Frederic Watts, OM was a popular English Victorian painter and sculptor associated with the Symbolist movement. Watts became famous in his lifetime for his allegorical works, such as Hope and Love and Life...
and his second wife Mary Fraser Tytler
Mary Fraser Tytler
Mary Seton Fraser Tytler was a symbolist craftswoman, designer and social reformer.-Biography:...
had long been advocates of the idea of art as a force for social change. Watts had painted a series of portraits of those figures he considered to be a positive social influence, the "Hall of Fame", which was donated to the National Portrait Gallery. As the son of a piano maker, who reportedly despised the wealthy and powerful and twice refused a baronet
Baronet
A baronet or the rare female equivalent, a baronetess , is the holder of a hereditary baronetcy awarded by the British Crown...
cy, Watts had long considered a national monument to the bravery of ordinary people. In August 1866, he suggested to his patron Charles Rickards that he "erect a great statue to Unknown Worth", and proposed erecting a colossal bronze figure. Unable to secure funds, the memorial remained unrealised.
On 5 September 1887, a letter was published in The Times from Watts, proposing a scheme to commemorate the Golden Jubilee
Golden Jubilee
A Golden Jubilee is a celebration held to mark a 50th anniversary.- In Thailand :King Bhumibol Adulyadej, the world's longest-reigning monarch, celebrated his Golden Jubilee on 9 June 1996.- In the Commonwealth Realms :...
of Queen Victoria
Victoria of the United Kingdom
Victoria was the monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death. From 1 May 1876, she used the additional title of Empress of India....
. Entitled "Another Jubilee Suggestion", Watts proposed to "collect a complete record of the stories of heroism in every-day life". Watts cited the case of Alice Ayres
Alice Ayres
Alice Ayres was an English nursemaid honoured for her bravery in rescuing the children in her care from a house fire. Ayres was a household assistant and nursemaid to the family of her brother-in-law and sister, Henry and Mary Ann Chandler...
, a servant who, trapped in a burning house, gave up the chance to jump to safety, instead first throwing a mattress out of the window to cushion the fall, before running back into the house three times to fetch her employer's children and throwing them out of a window onto the mattress to safety before herself being overcome by fumes and falling out of the window to her death.
Watts by this stage had abandoned the idea of a colossal bronze figure, and proposed "a kind of Campo Santo
Camposanto Monumentale
The Campo Santo, also known as Camposanto Monumentale or Camposanto Vecchio , is a historical edifice at the northern edge of the Cathedral Square in Pisa, Italy....
", consisting of a covered way and marble wall inscribed with the names of everyday heroes, to be built in Hyde Park
Hyde Park, London
Hyde Park is one of the largest parks in central London, United Kingdom, and one of the Royal Parks of London, famous for its Speakers' Corner.The park is divided in two by the Serpentine...
. Despite an offer of funding from John Passmore Edwards
John Passmore Edwards
John Passmore Edwards was a British journalist, newspaper owner and philanthropist. The son of a carpenter, he was born in Blackwater, a small village between Redruth and Truro in Cornwall, United Kingdom.-Biography:...
, Watts's suggestion was not taken up, leading Watts to comment that "if I had proposed a race course round Hyde Park, there would have been plenty of sympathisers". Watts continued to lobby for such a memorial, with both himself and Mary Watts redrafting their wills to leave the bulk of their estate to the purpose, and considered selling his home, New Little Holland House, to finance the project.
The Memorial to Heroic Self Sacrifice
In 1898 a friend of Watts suggested to Henry Gamble, Vicar of St Botolph's Aldersgate, that should the church manage to purchase the land owned by the CPF it would make a suitable site for Watts's memorial. Watts was approached, and agreed to the suggestion. On 13 October 1898 the appeal was relaunched, with the proposal that if the remaining £3,000 were raised, Watts would design and build a covered way, which in due course would be lined with memorial tablets to commemorate the bravery of ordinary people. Watts planned to build a covered way around three sides of a quadrangle, with the roof supported on stone or timber columns.City Press (London)
The City Press was a newspaper published during the 19th and early 20th Centuries by W H & L Collingridge Ltd.It was founded in 1857 by William Hill Collingridge to provide a newspaper for the City of London....
to complain about the scheme. He argued that the MPGA had devoted large amounts of time and money to prevent the park from being built on, and that while Watts's proposal was "worthy of all encouragement and support", Postman's Park, at less than an acre and surrounded by tall buildings, was an inappropriate site. The three-sided design was abandoned, in favour of a 50 feet (15.2 m) long and 9 feet (2.7 m) tall wooden loggia
Loggia
Loggia is the name given to an architectural feature, originally of Minoan design. They are often a gallery or corridor at ground level, sometimes higher, on the facade of a building and open to the air on one side, where it is supported by columns or pierced openings in the wall...
with a tiled roof, designed by Ernest George
Ernest George
Sir Ernest George RA was an English architect, landscape and architectural watercolour painter, and etcher.-Life and work:...
. The supporting wall contained space for 120 memorial tablets. St Botolph's Aldersgate secured the necessary funds to complete the purchase of the CPF land, and Watts agreed to pay the £700 (about £ as of ) construction costs himself.
Mandell Creighton
Mandell Creighton , was a British historian and a bishop of the Church of England. A scholar of the Renaissance papacy, Creighton was the first occupant of the Dixie Chair of Ecclesiastical History at the University of Cambridge, a professorship that was established around the time that the study...
, Bishop of London
Bishop of London
The Bishop of London is the ordinary of the Church of England Diocese of London in the Province of Canterbury.The diocese covers 458 km² of 17 boroughs of Greater London north of the River Thames and a small part of the County of Surrey...
. A short service was held in St Botolph's Aldersgate, after which a short speech was given by Creighton in which he observed that:
Watts himself, by now 83 years old, was too ill to attend the ceremony, and was represented by Mary Watts.
William De Morgan memorial tablets
Although Watts's plans for the memorial had envisaged names inscribed on the wall, in the event the memorial was designed to hold panels of hand-painted and glazed ceramic tileTile
A tile is a manufactured piece of hard-wearing material such as ceramic, stone, metal, or even glass. Tiles are generally used for covering roofs, floors, walls, showers, or other objects such as tabletops...
s. Watts was an acquaintance of William De Morgan
William De Morgan
William Frend De Morgan was an English potter and tile designer. A lifelong friend of William Morris, he designed tiles, stained glass and furniture for Morris & Co. from 1863 to 1872. His tiles are often based on medieval designs or Persian patterns, and he experimented with innovative glazes and...
, at that time one of the world's leading tile designers, and consequently found them easier and cheaper to obtain than engraved stone. The four initial memorial tablets, installed for the unveiling, each consisted of two large custom-made tiles, with each tablet costing £3 5s (about £ as of ) to produce. Only four tablets were installed by the time of the unveiling ceremony, and Watts already had concerns about the potential costs of installing the 120 tablets envisaged in the memorial's design.
Costs were allayed by using standard 6 inches (15.2 cm) tiles for the next set of tablets, reducing the costs to a more manageable £2 per tablet. In 1902, nine further tablets were installed, intermittently spaced along the central of the five rows, including the memorial to Alice Ayres for which Watts had lobbied.
On 1 July 1904 George Frederic Watts died at New Little Holland House, aged 87. He was hailed "The last great Victorian", and a memorial service was held in St Paul's Cathedral, 300 yards (274.3 m) south of Postman's Park, on 7 July 1904.
On 11 July 1904 Mary Watts wrote to the Heroic Self Sacrifice Memorial Committee, stating that she intended to complete the memorial and offering to select 35 names from Watts's list of names and to raise the £62 (about £ as of ) necessary to finance the completion of the first two rows of tablets. Mary Watts selected eleven names to complete the first row, and De Morgan provided the tiles in October 1905. Unfortunately, five of the tiles were damaged during shipping and needed to be replaced.
Relief
Relief is a sculptural technique. The term relief is from the Latin verb levo, to raise. To create a sculpture in relief is thus to give the impression that the sculpted material has been raised above the background plane...
plaque depicts Watts holding a scroll marked "Heroes", and is captioned "The utmost for the highest" and "In memorial of George Frederic Watts, who desiring to honour heroic self-sacrifice placed these records here". Eventually on 13 December 1905, the eleven tiles and Wren's memorial to Watts, placed in the centre of the monument, were unveiled by Arthur Winnington-Ingram
Arthur Winnington-Ingram
Arthur Foley Winnington-Ingram KCVO PC was Bishop of London from 1901 to 1939.-Early life and career:He was born in Worcestershire, the fourth son of the Revd Edward Winnington-Ingram and of Louisa...
, Bishop of London, completing the first row of tiles.
With the first row of tablets complete, Mary Watts and the Heroic Self Sacrifice Memorial Committee decided to complete the next row as soon as possible. The Committee selected 24 names, 22 proposed by Watts before his death and two from press reports of 1905, and De Morgan was duly commissioned to produce the new set of tablets.
Royal Doulton
William De Morgan was unwilling to compromise on quality or embrace the trend towards mass production, and by this time his work was significantly more expensive than similar works by other designers. Consequently, his ceramics business was becoming increasingly unviable financially. In 1906 his first novel, Joseph Vance, was published and became a great success, prompting De Morgan to close the ceramics business in 1907 to concentrate on writing. Mary Watts attempted to replicate De Morgan's tile designs at Watts's pottery in Compton but was unable to do so, and investigated other tile manufacturers.Royal Doulton
The Royal Doulton Company is an English company producing tableware and collectables, dating to 1815. Operating originally in London, its reputation grew in The Potteries, where it was a latecomer compared to Spode, Wedgwood and Minton...
, although they were unable or unwilling to replicate De Morgan's designs, and they were duly commissioned to manufacture the 24 tiles, delivered in May 1908. Mary Watts was unhappy with the design of the tiles, which were significantly different in colour and appearance from De Morgan's original tiles, and they were installed without ceremony on 21 August 1908, immediately below De Morgan's original row of tiles.
In 1905 the Heroic Self Sacrifice Memorial Committee had suggested to Mary Watts that public funds be raised to complete the memorial, but she objected and promised to complete the 120 tablets at her own cost or provide funds in her will to do so. However, in 1910 she told the Committee that she was unable to fund the project, as she was devoting her time and money to the Watts Mortuary Chapel
Watts Mortuary Chapel
The Watts Mortuary Chapel is a Gothic Revival chapel and mortuary located in the village of Compton in Surrey.As a follower of the Home Arts and Industries Association, set up by Earl Brownlow in 1885 to encourage handicrafts among the lower classes, when Compton Parish Council created a new...
and the Watts Gallery
Watts Gallery
Watts Gallery is an art gallery in the village of Compton, near Guildford in Surrey. It is dedicated to the work of Victorian era painter and sculptor George Frederic Watts....
in Compton. Work to fill the three empty rows of the memorial was abandoned.
Post-First World War memorials to police officers
On 13 June 1917, P.C.Constable
A constable is a person holding a particular office, most commonly in law enforcement. The office of constable can vary significantly in different jurisdictions.-Etymology:...
Alfred Smith, an officer of the Metropolitan Police
Metropolitan Police Service
The Metropolitan Police Service is the territorial police force responsible for Greater London, excluding the "square mile" of the City of London which is the responsibility of the City of London Police...
, was patrolling Central Street in Finsbury
Finsbury
Finsbury is a district of central London, England. It lies immediately north of the City of London and Clerkenwell, west of Shoreditch, and south of Islington and City Road. It is in the south of the London Borough of Islington. The Finsbury Estate is in the western part of the district...
, approximately 900 yards (823 m) directly north of Postman's Park. At about noon, fifteen German aircraft began a bombing raid
Aerial bombing of cities
A species of strategic bombing, the aerial bombing of cities began in 1915 during World War I, grew to a vast scale in World War II, and continues to the present day. The development of aerial bombardment marked an increased capacity of armed forces to deliver explosive weapons in populated areas...
, devastating the area. Around 150 women and girls working in the nearby Debenhams
Debenhams
Debenhams plc is a British retailer operating under a department store format in the UK, Ireland and Denmark, and franchise stores in other countries. The Company was founded in the eighteenth century as a single store in London and has now grown to around 160 shops...
factory panicked in the explosions, and ran out into the street while the air raid was still in progress. PC Smith and the manager of the factory shepherded them back to safety in the building, but Smith was caught by the blast of one of the bombs and died.
Following Smith's death J. Allen Baker
Joseph Allen Baker
Joseph Allen Baker was a Canadian born engineer, specialising in machinery for the confectionery and bakery industries and later in transportation systems, who was also a Liberal Party politician in London.-Family and education:...
, Member of Parliament
Member of Parliament
A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...
for Finsbury East
Finsbury East (UK Parliament constituency)
Finsbury East was a parliamentary constituency centred on the Finsbury district of North London. It returned one Member of Parliament to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, elected by the first past the post system.- History :...
, launched a public fund to support Smith's widow and young son and to provide a suitable memorial to him, raising a total of £471 14s 2d
Penny (British pre-decimal coin)
The penny of the Kingdom of Great Britain and later of the United Kingdom, was in circulation from the early 18th century until February 1971, Decimal Day....
(about £ as of ). On 13 June 1919, two years to the day after Smith's death, a memorial tablet to Smith made by Royal Doulton was unveiled at the start of the empty row directly above De Morgan's original tiles.
After the addition of Smith's memorial tablet, no further changes were made to the memorial in the years following the First World War. Although Mary Watts had always been opposed to the idea of a public subscription, in 1927 T. H. Ellis, Parish Clerk of St Botolph's Aldersgate, approached her to propose public fundraising to complete the memorial. Mary Watts agreed and an appeal was launched in May 1929, aiming to raise funds to repair and restore the by now run-down loggia, and to install additional tablets. By this time Watts's work was out of fashion, and the appeal was not as successful as was hoped, raising only £250 (about £ as of ). Of this total £30 was spent on the restoration of the loggia, leaving £220 for placing future tablets.
Disliking Royal Doulton's tiling designs, and with her time and money increasingly devoted to the maintenance of the Watts Gallery, Mary Watts by now was losing interest in the memorial and by 1930 had handed complete control to the Heroic Self Sacrifice Memorial Committee. Neither Mary Watts nor the Committee had added new names to the list originally proposed by Watts, and thus there were no proposed names more recent than 1904, with the vast majority dating back to the 19th century. The Committee decided that rather than use these by now dated records, they would request suggestions from relevant public bodies. The British Medical Association
British Medical Association
The British Medical Association is the professional association and registered trade union for doctors in the United Kingdom. The association does not regulate or certify doctors, a responsibility which lies with the General Medical Council. The association’s headquarters are located in BMA House,...
was asked to suggest brave medical professionals, the Metropolitan Police Service
Metropolitan Police Service
The Metropolitan Police Service is the territorial police force responsible for Greater London, excluding the "square mile" of the City of London which is the responsibility of the City of London Police...
to suggest brave police officers, and, in light of the park's name, the General Post Office was asked to suggest heroic postal workers. The Metropolitan Police suggested the names of three officers who had died while rescuing others, and on 15 October 1930 tablets to the three officers, manufactured by Royal Doulton to a similar design to their previous tablets, were added to the second row and unveiled by Postmaster-General Hastings Lees-Smith
Hastings Lees-Smith
Hastings Bertrand Lees-Smith PC was a British Labour politician who was briefly in the cabinet as President of the Board of Education in 1931...
in a ceremony also commemorating the 50th anniversary of the opening of the park, attended by Mary Watts and many police officers and relatives of those being commemorated.
East Ham
East Ham is a suburban district of London, England, and part of the London Borough of Newham. It is a built-up district located 8 miles east-northeast of Charing Cross...
Sewage Works in 1895, Watts had mistakenly listed the incident as having taken place at the West Ham Sewage Works in 1885. The De Morgan tablet was removed and replaced with a Royal Doulton tablet giving the correct location and date. As the Doulton tablets were in such a different style to De Morgan's, the replacement tablet was installed in the second row next to the three new tablets to police officers, rather than in the space left by the original.
Herbert Maconoghu
Removing the original tablet to the victims of the East Ham Sewage Works accident had left an unsightly gap in the original row of tiles. In 1931, Mary Watts tracked down Fred Passenger, a former employee of De Morgan who had, after the closure of the business, set up his own ceramics business using De Morgan designs. Passenger was by this time working for a pottery business in Bushey Heath established by artist Ida Perrin, but Mary Watts persuaded him to produce a single panel in the style of De Morgan to fit into the empty space. Herbert Maconoghu, a schoolboy who had died in 1882 attempting to rescue two friends from drowning, had been one of the names originally suggested by Watts, and Passenger produced a tablet to Maconoghu in the style of the original central row, which was installed in April 1931.Postman's Park after the death of Mary Watts
The nave of Christ Church Greyfriars was destroyed by bombing on 29 December 1940. By then the decline in the population of the City of London had reduced the congregation to less than 80, and the parishes of St Leonard, Foster Lane and Christ Church Greyfriars were merged with nearby St Sepulchre-without-Newgate
St Sepulchre-without-Newgate
St Sepulchre-without-Newgate, also known as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre , is an Anglican church in the City of London. It is located on Holborn Viaduct, almost opposite the Old Bailey...
. Although parts of the ruins were cleared during a widening of King Edward Street after the Second World War, the remains of the nave of Christ Church Greyfriars became a public memorial in 1989; the tower is now office space.
St Botolph's Aldersgate remains open as a functioning church. Unusually for an English church, because of its location in a now mainly commercial area with few local residents, services are held on Tuesdays instead of the more traditional Sundays. On 4 January 1950, St Botolph's Aldersgate and the surviving ruins of Christ Church Greyfriars were both designated Grade I listed buildings.
In 1934, a statue of Sir Robert Peel
Robert Peel
Sir Robert Peel, 2nd Baronet was a British Conservative statesman who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 10 December 1834 to 8 April 1835, and again from 30 August 1841 to 29 June 1846...
erected in Cheapside
Cheapside
Cheapside is a street in the City of London that links Newgate Street with the junction of Queen Victoria Street and Mansion House Street. To the east is Mansion House, the Bank of England, and the major road junction above Bank tube station. To the west is St. Paul's Cathedral, St...
in 1855 was declared an obstruction to traffic and removed. A proposal that it be installed in front of the Bank of England
Bank of England
The Bank of England is the central bank of the United Kingdom and the model on which most modern central banks have been based. Established in 1694, it is the second oldest central bank in the world...
fell through, and in 1952 it was erected in Postman's Park. In 1971 the Metropolitan Police requested that the statue be moved to the new Peel Centre
Hendon Police College
Hendon Police College is the principal training centre for London's Metropolitan Police Service. Founded with the official name of the Metropolitan Police College, the college is today officially called the Peel Centre, although its original name is still used frequently...
police training complex, and the Corporation of London agreed. In place of Peel's statue, a large bronze sculpture of the Minotaur
Minotaur
In Greek mythology, the Minotaur , as the Greeks imagined him, was a creature with the head of a bull on the body of a man or, as described by Roman poet Ovid, "part man and part bull"...
by Michael Ayrton
Michael Ayrton
Michael Ayrton was an English artist and writer, known as a painter, printmaker and sculptor, and also as a critic, broadcaster and novelist...
was unveiled in 1973. Dominating the small park, in 1997 the Minotaur sculpture was moved to a new position on the raised walkway above London Wall
London Wall
London Wall was the defensive wall first built by the Romans around Londinium, their strategically important port town on the River Thames in what is now the United Kingdom, and subsequently maintained until the 18th century. It is now the name of a road in the City of London running along part of...
.
Postman's Park came to increased public notice in 2004 with the release of the BAFTA
British Academy Film Awards
The British Academy Film Awards are presented in an annual award show hosted by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts . It is the British counterpart of the Oscars. As of 2008, it has taken place in the Royal Opera House, having taken over from the flagship Odeon cinema on Leicester Square...
- and Golden Globe
Golden Globe Award
The Golden Globe Award is an accolade bestowed by the 93 members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association recognizing excellence in film and television, both domestic and foreign...
-winning film Closer
Closer (film)
Closer is a 2004 romantic drama film written by Patrick Marber, based on his award-winning 1997 play of the same name. It was produced and directed by Mike Nichols and stars Natalie Portman, Julia Roberts, Jude Law and Clive Owen...
, which stars Natalie Portman
Natalie Portman
Natalie Hershlag , better known by her stage name Natalie Portman, is an actress with dual American and Israeli citizenship. Her first role was as an orphan taken in by a hitman in the 1994 French action film Léon, but major success came when she was cast as Padmé Amidala in the Star Wars prequel...
, Julia Roberts
Julia Roberts
Julia Fiona Roberts is an American actress. She became a Hollywood star after headlining the romantic comedy Pretty Woman , which grossed $464 million worldwide...
, Jude Law
Jude Law
David Jude Heyworth Law , known professionally as Jude Law, is an English actor, film producer and director.He began acting with the National Youth Music Theatre in 1987, and had his first television role in 1989...
and Clive Owen
Clive Owen
Clive Owen is an English actor, who has worked on television, stage and film. He first gained recognition in the United Kingdom for portraying the lead in the ITV series Chancer from 1990 to 1991...
, and is based on the 1997 play Closer
Closer (play)
Closer is the third play written by English playwright Patrick Marber. The play was premiered at the Royal National Theatre's Cottesloe Theatre in London in 1997, and made its North American debut at the Music Box Theatre on Broadway on 25 January 1999....
by Patrick Marber
Patrick Marber
Patrick Albert Crispin Marber is an English comedian, playwright, director, puppeteer, actor and screenwriter.-Early life and education:...
. A key plot element in the film revolves around Postman's Park, in which it is revealed that the character Alice Ayres (played by Portman in the film) has in fact fabricated her identity based on Ayres's tablet on the Memorial to Heroic Self Sacrifice, which she had read at the time of her first meeting with Dan Woolf (Jude Law) at the start of the film.
Leigh Pitt
Leigh Pitt, a print technician from Surrey, had died on 7 June 2007 rescuing nine-year-old Harley Bagnall-Taylor who was drowning in a canal in ThamesmeadThamesmead
Thamesmead is a district of south-east London, England, located in the London Boroughs of Greenwich and Bexley. It is situated east of Charing Cross....
. His colleagues and fiancée Hema Shah approached the Diocese of London to suggest that Pitt would make a suitable addition to the memorial, and despite previous opposition from the Watts Gallery to proposals to complete the memorial, on 11 June 2009 a memorial to Pitt was added to the Memorial to Heroic Self Sacrifice, the first new tablet added to the memorial since that of Herbert Maconoghu 78 years earlier. A spokesman for the Diocese of London said that the Diocese would now consider suitable names to be added to the memorial in future.
Styles of tiling used on the Memorial to Heroic Self Sacrifice
The tablets are arranged on the second, third and fourth of the five rows, with 24 tablets to William De Morgan's original design in the third, central, row, the 24 tablets added in 1908 directly below in the fourth row, and more recent additions above the original tiles in the second row. The first and fifth of the five rows remain empty. The first four tablets, designed and manufactured by De Morgan and installed in 1900, were each made from two large custom-made tiles. Nine further De Morgan tablets, installed in 1902, were made using standard tiles to reduce costs, and were the last tiles whose installation was overseen by Watts. Eleven further De Morgan tablets, along with T. H. Wren's memorial to Watts, were added in 1905, completing the central row of tablets. All 24 tablets of the 4th row, designed and manufactured by Royal Doulton, were added as a single batch in August 1908. A single Royal Doulton tablet to PC Alfred Smith was added in June 1919, followed in October 1930 by similar Royal Doulton tablets to three further police officers, and a replacement tablet with the correct details of the East Ham Sewage Works incident of 1895. A single tablet made by Fred Passenger in the original De Morgan style, honouring schoolboy Herbert Maconoghu, was added in April 1931 to fill the gap in the centre row left by the removal of the original, incorrect tablet to the victims of the East Ham Sewage Works incident. In 2009 a 54th tablet was added, in the style of the Royal Doulton tiles, to commemorate print technician Leigh Pitt, the first addition to the wall for 78 years.  |
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External links
- City of London Corporation City Gardens Official site
- Watts Gallery Images, texts and video of the memorial
- The Joy of Shards Pictures and explanation of some of the tiles
- Flickr Postman's Park group A large and growing collection of pictures of the park with an accompanying discussion group