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Category: Features

London Park plea to PM and senior politicians

European experts offer to help find a solution for Victoria Tower Gardens

London Parks and Gardens welcomes an offer of help made to all stakeholders in a stand-off over the future of one of London’s protected historic gardens.

Europa Nostra, Europe’s largest civil society heritage network, backed by the European Investment Bank, has a group of independent planning and heritage experts ready and willing to help find a solution for the UK Government and campaigners at odds over plans for a national Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre where concerns focus on the future integrity of the chosen location.

Background

Victoria Tower Gardens is a grade II listed park in a conservation area and forms part of a World Heritage Site. Eleven years’ ago, the then Prime Minister David Cameron committed to build a national Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre and the park was later named as the chosen location.

The proposed development would consume 20% of the park’s total area, and 40% of the open green lawn space. London Parks & Gardens [LPG] has successfully challenged this project since 2016 on the grounds it ignores legal protection granted to the park, and the plans would forever change the nature of the space. Our views have been upheld through the planning process and in the courts, yet successive Governments remain determined to impose this substantial development on this treasured small green space. This month, Government plans to rewrite laws protecting the park pass through the House of Lords, leaving a small window of opportunity for politicians to review the mounting evidence against the proposal.

Position

Campaigners, nationally and internationally, fully support the creation of a Memorial and Learning Centre but evidence shows Victoria Tower Gardens is wholly unsuitable for its location. In 2019, UNESCO’s International Council on Monuments and Sites said the memorial would have a “massive visual impact” on the World Heritage Site of the Palace of Westminster. Earlier this year, upon the nomination submitted by the London Gardens Trust, Victoria Tower Gardens was selected by Europa Nostra as one of Europe’s 7 Most Endangered [‘7ME’] heritage sites.

Action

In this framework Europa Nostra has recently written to the Speaker of the House of Commons, to the Leader of the House of Lords, and to the UK Prime Minister, drawing their personal attention to the reasons for the inclusion of this protected garden in the 7 Most Endangered List for 2025.  Europa Nostra has proposed a meeting between representatives of Government and stakeholders and its expert delegation to discuss possible alternative solutions for the siting of the proposed Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre.

Quotes

Tim Webb, Interim Director of London Parks and Gardens, says:

“We welcome this support from Europa Nostra and feel it could be a game-changer, helping us all find a way through our impasse, saving the integrity of Victoria Tower Gardens and protecting its cultural, social, and environmental value for all while finally enabling both a memorial and a new world class and fit for purpose Learning Centre to be built.”

A spokesperson for the Save Victoria Tower Gardens campaign group added:

“Constructive discussion over the location for the UK Holocaust Memorial & Learning Centre is long overdue. We desperately need a compromise which satisfies all parties, while avoiding the irreversible damage currently proposed for the precious green space at Victoria Tower Gardens. The Save Victoria Tower Gardens campaign group welcomes the offer from Europa Nostra to mediate to that end.”

Notes

  • London Parks and Gardens is a registered charity. We believe green spaces make London liveable. Our vision is green spaces in London, old and new, can be enjoyed by everyone and their cultural, societal and environmental values are protected.
  • LPG first raised concerns about VTG in a 2019 study, estimating the Memorial and Learning Centre and necessary security and crowd management installations would encompass 27% of the park’s recreational space.
  • The 7 Most Endangered Programme forms part of a civil society campaign to save Europe’s endangered heritage. It raises awareness, prepares independent assessments and proposes recommendations for action. It also provides a grant of €10,000 per listed site to assist in implementing an agreed activity contributing to saving the threatened site. Launched in 2013, this innovative programme is run by Europa Nostra in partnership with the European Investment Bank (EIB) Institute. It also has the support of the Creative Europe programme of the European Union.
  • Europa Nostra is the European voice of civil society committed to safeguarding and promoting cultural and natural heritage. It is a pan-European federation of heritage NGOs, supported by a wide network of public bodies, private companies and individuals, covering over 40 countries. It is the largest and the most representative heritage network in Europe, maintaining close relations with the European Union, the Council of Europe, UNESCO and other international bodies. Founded in 1963, Europa Nostra celebrated its 60th anniversary in 2023.
  • Victoria Tower Gardens is home to three iconic and listed memorials:
    1. the Buxton Memorial Fountain to the parliamentarians who achieved the abolition of slavery in the British Empire;
    2. Auguste Rodin’s Burghers of Calais depicting the bravery and altruism of that city’s leaders after the city fell to the English in the Hundred Years war with France;
    3. the Pankhurst Memorial celebrating the campaign for female suffrage in the UK. To the south there is a popular children’s play area: donated in the 1920s by the Spicer family, an innovative space of respite in Westminster’s busy and noisy setting.
  • Development plans for the memorial and learning centre originally recommended other possible sites, but these were rejected by the proposers, naming Victoria Tower Gardens their chosen location.
  • UNESCO/ICOMOS comments. In 2019, the advisory body said the memorial would ‘dominate’ the gardens and detract from how Westminster World Heritage Site (WHS) – on its list since 1987 – is experienced. By interrupting views of the tower and palace, the WHS would be ‘fundamentally compromised’ by the new memorial, it said, adding: ‘The current plans would result in the gardens being dominated by the memorial, its bulky entrance pavilion, enclosed forecourt and hard landscaping, as well as the forecast one million visitors a year.’

Migration and the Huguenots: Mount Nod Cemetery, Wandsworth

Nestled within a trinity of thoroughfares amid traffic travelling west towards Putney, east to Clapham, running parallel with the line of traffic from Tooting to Vauxhall, sits a triangular garden of spirituality and remembrance known as Mount Nod Cemetery.

The southerly edge is sheltered by the spire of St Mary Magdalen Roman Catholic Church, whose doors are reassuringly well-worn and steeple is without undue opulence. The church is neighboured by a hall where the Order of Malta holds a weekly supper club for those in need. Abutting these is the churchyard known as the Huguenot Burial Ground.

Formerly known as the French Cemetery, the site was established as a churchyard in 1680 and began to be used as a burial site in 1687. The last burial took place in 1849. Three decades later, in 1886, John Traviss recorded 150 graves, 30 of which were Huguenot refugees who had emigrated to London to start their lives afresh.

Walking through the gates, you are led along a trail of names and memories of those whose lives have impacted our own today in ways we can only imagine. The specific migration to London of this small, French diaspora is recorded by the headstones and tombs.

Huguenots were converts to Protestantism in Catholic France during the sixteenth century. The followers of the teachings of John Calvin (1509 -1564) grew in numbers and power throughout the seventeenth century. Whilst their rights were formally established by King Henry IV of France, through the Edict of Nantes, their perceived threat to the established religious and political order led to periods of persecution in the late sixteenth century. By the 1680s, a Roman Catholic revival prompted an increasing number of challenges to the liberties of the Huguenots. The official tolerance was revoked by the more zealous monarch Louis XIV who resented the liberty of religious and civil rights of non-Catholics, causing many Huguenots to flee their homeland in fear of persecution.

Many travelled throughout Europe, bringing with them their skills, knowledge and a reputation for hard work. Some came to London, and gathered to form a community in Wandsworth.  About 50,000 Huguenots were believed to have travelled to the UK between 1670 and 1710.

Huguenots were skilled brewers, map makers, glass blowers, goldsmiths, horticulturalists, printers, bakers, silversmiths, tanners, watchmakers, linen makers and weavers. In addition, there were significant numbers of soldiers, seafarers, engineers, farmers, scientists, pastors, merchants, musicians and shopkeepers.

The Huguenots who settled in Wandsworth were attracted by the cloth and textile mills which lined the banks of the River Wandle. The way you dress and present yourself held great importance and social significance then, just as it does in some circles today, and French fashions and skills in clothmaking were highly prized. Evidence of this area’s pre-eminence in the industry remains in the frontage of former tailors noted for both court and civil tailoring surviving along the high street and not far from Mount Nod.

Their skills as hat and dress-makers helped establish 17th and 18th century Wandsworth as a centre of fashion and tailoring, although a social commentator of the time noted, “Wandsworth was long famous for hat making.” French tailoring was popular during that period and the skills of the migrant Huguenot were much sought-after.

the skills of the migrant Huguenot were much sought-after. This area of Wandsworth became a hub for the French cloth workers in an area already well-established as a hatters’ enclave.

Sewing and tailoring, knowledge of fabrics, and the techniques of French fashions were welcome skills and the arriving Huguenots firmly established themselves within the existing community of weavers and hatmakers; contributing to those industries as both experts and entrepreneurs.

The Huguenots who lived in the area set up a French-speaking church in the 1680s at Chapel Yard close to Wandsworth High Street. Attendance declined over the years and in 1787 it closed its doors. This may be interpreted as a sign that over the passing of a single century, French Huguenots adopted the behaviours and lifestyles of the communities which welcomed them.

As they lived in the area, so it became the place where they traded their wares, earned their living, learned and taught their crafts, loved their closest friends and family, practiced their faith, lived their lives, and ended their days.

The souls of the Huguenots who made their mark can be found in this burial ground, such as Samuel John (1701 – 1759) the clerk of Bridewell and Bedlam hospitals. A man described as ‘eminent in the profession of the law’ and a man of ‘invincible integrity’. His contemporary, James Baudouin (c1648 – 1739) was born in Nismes, France but fled in 1685. Having arrived in London at the age of 37, by 1718 he was a landowner in Putney and became the first Deputy-Governor of the French Hospital, established for the relief of ‘poor, sick and infirm French Protestants’. One might easily imagine that the Putney Debates would have been at the forefront of Monsieur Baudouin’s awareness, and that he may have been aware that these were paths once walked by Thomas Cromwell before him.

Mount Nod Cemetery was used from 1687 to 1854. While the burial ground was first opened in the late 17th century, like so many other cemeteries in London, it was closed in 1854 as part of the Metropolitan Burials Act. Today it comes under the care of Wandsworth Council, who replaced the railings around it in 2003. Restorations have been undertaken with participation from the Huguenot Society, the Wandsworth Society and the Wandsworth Historical Society.

Efforts of care have been clearly undertaken to ensure that the pathways remain in their natural position, as they would have been tread for centuries, and for as long as it has been a garden of peace and a final resting place. The Huguenots travelled across the sea from France, up the coast through Kent and past the City of London to find work, reward and respite, and no doubt very good ale, at the top of this hill in Wandsworth.

Research, words and images by Maeve Dineen, March 2025.

Todd Longstaffe-Gowan – Guest Curator LOG 2025

Todd Longstaffe-Gowan President of London Parks & Gardens
Todd Longstaffe-Gowan,
President of London Parks & Gardens

Sustaining and Protecting London’s Greenspaces

Last autumn I was privileged to curate an exhibition at the Garden Museum on lost gardens of London. I have long been beguiled by capital’s vast and diverse legacy of gardens – ranging from princely riverside estates and ‘animated gardens’ (menageries and aviaries), to squares, humble allotments, nurseries, botanic gardens, zoological and ecological gardens, cemeteries and suburban retreats – so the opportunity to explore those that had vanished over the past half a millennium was a wonderful indulgence.

The aims of my exhibition and its accompanying book (Lost Gardens of London) were twofold: to recover and celebrate an array of gardens that no longer exist, but of which tantalising fragments remain that supply some hint of what has been lost; gardens that are known solely through the eyes of topographers, artists or writers, or through the echoes of surviving elements that attest to their former presence. My second aim was to remind us what a precious asset gardened space is and how over the centuries it has contributed to the quality of life and well-being of generations of Londoners.

London Open Gardens 2025 is an opportunity for garden lovers everywhere to express their enduring affection and support for the capital’s greenspaces. This year, as the gates to over one hundred gardens are thrown open to welcome the curious, we should pause to reflect on both our good fortune that London is so well-endowed with verdant oases, and that we must do our utmost to sustain and protect these invaluable ‘breathing spaces’ for posterity. The nature of gardens is that they are at the best of times precarious and vulnerable, fleeting and ever-changing, and they are especially so in a metropolitan context. It is this transitory quality of gardens that makes them so alluring and poignant – that gives them an ‘ecstatic charm’.

Edwardes Square (Photo: Diana Jarvis)

A few gardens open this Open Gardens weekend have come within a whisker of being built over. In 1903 the central garden of Edwardes Square (est. 1811) in Kensington – a delightfully picturesque and ‘socially select and largely self-governing enclave’ – was put up for sale by its freeholder the sixth Lord Kensington. Although the sale became a cause célèbre and precipitated the passing of the London Squares and Enclosures (Preservation) Act of 1906, the latter did not apply to Edwardes Square. In 1910 the square’s new owners renewed their assault on the central garden – this time threatening to erect a cinema over the whole. In the event, a ‘difficult group of householders’, with the assistance of the London County Council (LCC) and the Kensington Committee, thwarted the ambitions of the speculative builders and in 1912 the enclosure was given protection in perpetuity.

Mecklenburgh Square (Photo: Andrew Gillman)

Mecklenburgh Square (est. 1804) in Bloomsbury, was also for some years imperilled. In 1924 it was sold by the Foundling Hospital Estate with a view to becoming the new home of Covent Garden Market. The proposal aroused intense opposition from the residents of the ‘menaced square’ and the tenants of the market, and the ‘Garden Market Removal Bill’ was eventually withdrawn.

Such depredations were not uncommon: over 40 garden squares were threatened with destruction in the mid-1920s. Indeed, such acts of vandalism continue to take place today: within the past decade a dozen giant plane trees were felled in Euston Square Gardens (est. 1812), and the ground paved over to make way for a temporary taxi rank and cycle stands; and the remains of St James’s Burial Ground (est. c.1788) were ploughed up to enable the expansion of Euston Station for the HS2 rail link.

As a correspondent to the Times declared on the eve of the Euston Station’s assault on the same burial ground in May 1883, ‘every little space where the wind can freely circulate, and air charged with human breath and all the vapours emanating from human habitations can, in however small a degree, be purified by contact with leaves and grass, is of vital importance to the health of London’.

Todd Longstaffe-Gowan

April 2025

Wandsworth U3A researchers unearth stories from their local cemeteries

Introduction

Taking the Lower Richmond Road from Putney Bridge towards Barnes you come to the adjoining common lands of Barnes and Putney Lower Commons. This is part of the extensive green corridor stretching from WWT Wetlands in the north through Barnes and Roehampton to Richmond Park and Wimbledon Common in the south.

Continue reading Wandsworth U3A researchers unearth stories from their local cemeteries