Another group of gardens, green spaces which offer a peaceful retreat from the hectic pace of the City and its surroundings. These four are all called St John, three of them are linked, three are former burial grounds which were converted to gardens in the Victorian era, and these three are all now conservation areas or nature reserves All are open and free to visit during daylight hours.

St John’s Waterloo

This garden lies on the site of the former churchyard of St John the Evangelist Church, Waterloo. The churchyard was closed to burials in the early 1800s and converted to a public garden in 1877. Octavia Hill, co-founder of the National Trust, and her sister Miranda, were passionate about the need for green spaces for Londoners to enjoy, and they were instrumental in the design and establishment of the garden. As with many former churchyards, some gravestones are stacked against a perimeter wall and there are pretty flowerbeds and herbaceous borders, one of which is maintained by London homeless charity, St Mungo’s. The crypt of the church was once the home of Southbank Mosaics (now the London School of Mosaic) and there are several mosaics hidden around the garden. Of particular interest is the bench, made of mosaic tiles and dedicated to homeless people who have died on the streets, who are named on the bench. The garden is managed by a community gardener and volunteers, and contains hedges that reduce air pollution and a wildlife garden to encourage birds and insects.

Sources: London: The Hidden Corners for Curious Wanderers; Jack Chesher@livinglondonhistory, Frances Lincoln Publishing, 2025

lambeth.gov.uk/parks/stjohnschurchgardens

St John’s Gardens, Islington

I actually thought that this garden and St John’s Priory Garden were the same place; in fact both were part of the medieval precincts of St John’s Priory which covered a large area of Clerkenwell. This garden is a former burial ground used mainly for the burial of the poor, which was later converted into a Victorian ornamental garden. During the intervening years between closure of the burial ground in 1854 and conversion to a public garden in 1870, the area was used as ‘a sort of waste ground on which pots and pans and refuse of all kinds, were flung from the neighbouring houses.’ Clerkenwell was a particularly deprived area of the City and the garden was intended to provide ‘a nook of greenery in this dingy and squalid part of London, where the workman may smoke his pipe in the dinner hour and feeble folk rest and chat in the summer sunshine.’ Today the garden is a designated Site of Importance for Nature Conservation, with year-round pollinating plants, bird boxes and bug hotels. When I visited there were office workers, construction workers and some retirees enjoying the spring sunshine – its original purpose lives on!

Source: londongardentrust.org

St John’s Priory Garden

This garden is part of the Museum of the Order of St John at St John’s Gate. The Cloister Garden, as its known, has an outline of the original 12th century round church marked out with cobblestones and with an olive tree in its centre. The garden was established between 1955 and 1958 when the later church was restored after being bombed in 1941. Most famous today for being the foundation of St John’s Ambulance, the Order’s historic nursing and medical role is reflected in the garden by the planting of the medicinal herbs used in patient care in their medieval hospitals. As well as being a delightful place to wander and rest, it is also a memorial garden for members of the St John Foundation who lost their lives in two world wars. Adjacent to the garden, before entering it through an archway, there is a memorial chapel with remembrance plaques to the lost. When I visited in early May, the trees and shrubs were coming into flower in this ‘small but perfectly formed’ garden. There are also proportionately more benches than I’ve seen in any other public garden!

Source: Noticeboards in the Garden

St John’s Wood Church Garden

This church garden in NW8 has a connection with the Order of St John: the land was owned by the Order in medieval times. Following the Dissolution of the Monasteries the land passed to the Crown (i.e., Henry Vlll) was later sold into private ownership and finally sold back to the Church for the establishment of a new church and burial ground, which were both consecrated in 1814. The consecration ceremony was organised by a vestryman, one Thomas Lord, who had established his new cricket club on its final site only a few months before. He offered his newly erected cricket pavilion to provide the refreshments for the occasion. The burial grounds, on either side of a large grassed area, are still consecrated ground and one side is a nature reserve, the only Local Nature Reserve in the City of Westminster. On the other side, the latest, futuristic looking pavilion of Lord’s Cricket Ground can be seen from the graveyard. This lovely garden is so diverse: there’s a tropical garden with various types of palm tree, a children’s play park, a giant chess set and the aforementioned nature reserve, surprisingly quiet and secluded. Winding paths and benches are set amongst the gravestones, where I snapped a squirrel in an ornamental urn!

Sources: Wikipedia; Noticeboard in the Gardens

Many of London’s churches are over one thousand years old, and with the capital’s history of fire and war, not many have escaped unscathed, in fact several have been completely destroyed. Having been unable to get into any city churches for a while, fortunately I did get to visit some gardens and churchyards in November/early December where there used to be a church which has long since gone. The information about the gardens is mainly sourced from The London Gardens Trust website (londongardenstrust.org) which has an inventory of every public garden in every London Borough. Lots more for me to visit when circumstances allow!

St Alphage Gardens, London Wall

In February last year, in Romantic Ruins, I wrote about the beautiful remains of the tower of St Alphage church. The church fell into disrepair and was actually completely demolished in 1540 and the site was made into a public garden in 1872. One century later, the Barbican and London Wall areas were completely redeveloped, being the most heavily bombed sites of the City in WWll. The Corporation of London scheme created a new business and housing district and as part of the landscaping, a fragment of the old Roman Wall and the tower were retained and are now carefully maintained, to my eternal joy!  This pic shows one of the famous Barbican Highwalks, the ‘pavements in the sky’. The garden isn’t very impressive in the pic, but it was November!

The tower suffered extensive bomb damage but has been carefully preserved and (I think) sits well with the later architecture, which dates from 1970 to brand new office blocks. I love that at one time the tower was used as a hospital for the blind and disabled, at a time when care for the poor and sick was inextricably linked with the Church and Christian service.

St Mary Aldermanbury

Just across the road from St Alphage (although it’s a very wide road, London Wall) is the garden of St Mary Aldermanbury. Probably named from the Aldermans’ ‘Berry’ or Court Hall, which stood nearby, there was a church here by 1181 and a churchyard by 1250.  Interesting things about this site: this statue of Shakespeare is actually a monument to fellow actors John Heminge and Henry Condell, who, after the playwright’s death in 1616, collected his works and published them at their own expense. Shame there’s not a statue of the two of them, we all know what Shakespeare looks like!

And now to the fate of the church that was once here.  The plaque on the site reads: ‘Site of the church of St Mary Aldermanbury. First mentioned in 1181. Destroyed by the Great Fire in 1666. Rebuilt by Wren, destroyed by bombing in 1944. The remaining fabric was removed to Westminster College, Fulton Missouri, USA 1966 and restored as a memorial to Sir Winston Churchill’.  So a somewhat different fate to most demolished City churches! There’s an engraving of the church in situ in Fulton, Missouri, above the plaque:

And lastly, some footings of the church in the garden:

St Mary Staining

A hop skip and jump from St Mary A is St Mary S. There’s been a church on this site since 1189 and ‘Staining’ probably refers to a family living in Staines who held the land. The church was destroyed in the Great Fire and not restored. In 1965 the Corporation of London took over maintenance of the open space created on the site of the church and churchyard. I visited this site (and St Mary Aldermanbury) as part of a London Walks tour in December 2019, these are brilliant walks covering different areas and different themes around London. There are two interesting things about this site: firstly, the building next to the site was built sloping backwards to ensure that the London plane tree in the garden would receive enough light. Hope you get a sense of this from the pic.

Secondly, around this area there are lots of Livery Company Halls, these started out in the 1300s clubs or guilds to protect the different trades or professions; you can look them up on Wikipedia if you’re interested. Each one has a Hall as its headquarters, e.g., the Worshipful Company of Ironmongers, Waxchandlers (they made candles), Saddlemakers, etc, and all are within a few streets of each other. The one closest to this site is the Pewterers Hall which was rebuilt here in 1961 following demolition of the original Hall. Here are the Coats of Arms of the Pewterers Company and the Waxchandlers Company, beautiful, aren’t they? I like their mottoes too.

All Hallows, Southwark

This was quite a recently built church (1880 by George Gilbert Scott Jnr) but was bombed twice in WW11, rendering it completely unusable and demolished in 1957. The only remains of the church are two stone arches and a chapel, now in residential use – great place to live! This pic is from The London Gardens Trust because when I visited, there was a lot of rubbish strewn around this area and I couldn’t take a good photo. The garden itself was well maintained.

This garden, in Copper Street, is a couple of streets away from the St Saviour’s Union Workhouse at Mint Street, which is thought to have provided Charles Dickens with the model for the workhouse in Oliver Twist.  When Dickens was young, he was in lodgings nearby and would have passed the workhouse on his way to work, seeing the pauper residents going to work in nearby factories and workshops. He revisited the area much later as a journalist on one of his fact-finding missions to schools, factories and workhouses in poor areas and more than likely would have visited St Saviour’s.*  I wish I’d explored the surrounding streets and got a sense of how the area would have looked in Dickens’ time. Another time, maybe!

* Info and picture from Southwarkheritage.wordpress.com