THE GARDEN MUSEUM is next door to London’s Tudor Lambeth Palace and close to Lambeth Bridge. The museum has its own gardens – one within an enclosed courtyard, and the other, containing several glasshouses, outside the museum. Next to the latter, there is yet another garden, the St Mary’s Gardens. This slender garden, filled with a wonderful range of flowering plants, was created in 1932, and improved considerably in 2008.
In the centre of this almost rectangular garden there is a circular water feature, decorated with mosaics. This is surrounded by several smaller mosaics, each one depicting fruits and animals. From the northern end of the garden, you can catch glimpses of the Houses of Parliament and the towers associated with them.
Flanked by the busy Lambeth Road that leads to Lambeth Bridge, this garden is a pleasant oasis in one of the most traffic-infested parts of London.
WHENEVER WE VISIT the Newport Street Gallery in London’s Lambeth district, we pass the entrance to a small garden. Today (19th of June 2024), we decided to enter this little park – a peaceful haven only a few hundred yards south of Lambeth Bridge. It is called Old Paradise Gardens. Irregular in shape, it has one long main path leading from its northern entrance in a southeasterly direction towards its southern entrance, close to a busy railway line. Near the northern entrance, there is a small fenced off area, which is being developed as a community garden in collaboration with the nearby Garden Museum (next door to Lambeth Palace). Not being botanically knowledgeable, I cannot describe the wide variety of plants growing in the Gardens, but I can say that they make for an extremely pleasant green environment.
We saw a few worn, illegible tombstones propped up against one of the garden’s walls. These provide an important clue about the history of the Gardens. The place was:
“…previously a burial ground provided to the parish by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1703. It was extended in 1816, but by 1853 was full and closed to burial. In 1880 it was decided to convert it into a public garden, which opened in 1884. Gravestones were moved to boundary walls … The recreation ground was extended in 1929 and by the 1970s was largely asphalted. Since re-landscaped, it has grassy mounds, a water feature, with shrubs and spring bulbs planted. In 2013 refurbishment was completed and the park was renamed Old Paradise Gardens. In 2023 a new community garden was introduced in the southeast corner designed by Dan Pearson Studios under the leadership of The Garden Museum nearby.” (https://londongardenstrust.org/conservation/inventory/site-record/?ID=LAM026&sitename=Old+Paradise+Gardens)
When we visited the Gardens at about 11 am today, we saw few other people. Probably, at weekends and after school is over, this delightful little open space becomes busier. It is always lovely to ‘discover’ yet another of London’s numerous green spaces – about 40% of London’s area is occupied by public green spaces.
If you happen to be in need of refreshment whilst visiting the Old Paradise Gardens, head for the elegant café attached to the nearby Garden Museum.
WE ARE KEEN on many of the plays put on at the Young Vic Theatre on The Cut near Waterloo Station. Last night (the 11th of March 2024), after seeing a superb performance of a weird but enjoyable play (about a painting by an infamous dictator) called “Nachland”, we walked along The Cut and then further west along a street called Lower Marsh. Sometimes. we return from the theatre via Lower Marsh, and I have often wondered about its name.
About 344 yards in length, Lower Marsh runs southwest from near the Old Vic theatre on Waterloo Road to Westminster Bridge Road. Until the 19th century, much of the northern tip of the old Parish of Lambeth, where Waterloo Station and the South Bank are now located, was marshland. A settlement called Lambeth Marsh (after which Lower Marsh was named) was first recorded on a document in 1377. This settlement ran along a raised road that some believe dated back to Roman Times. The marshland was drained in the 18th century, and by the 19th century isolated individual houses were being built in Lambeth Marsh. In 1848, after the opening of Waterloo railway station, the area known as Lambeth Marsh became known as it is now – as Waterloo. Lower Marsh and its neighbour The Cut formed the commercial area of the district.
There has been a market in Lower Marsh since the early 19th century. As I have only ever walked along Lower Marsh in the late evening, I have never seen the market in action. The street, which was already marked on a map drawn in 1690, linked two bridges (Waterloo and Blackfriars) constructed in the mid-18th century, and ran past:
“Leisure activities, including pleasure gardens, circuses, theatres which characterised the south bank in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries [and] were present in and around Lower Marsh.” (www.lowermarshmarket.co.uk/).
During the 19th century
:“The building of Waterloo Station in 1848 and its subsequent expansion cut the street off from the riverside, creating a number of yards and cul de sacs from former streets. In the twentieth century war damage, and subsequent housing redevelopment significantly changed the historic street patterns, confining the street market to Lower Marsh.”
Until quite recently (in the 21st century) Lower Marsh and its surroundings would have been described as somewhat ‘run down’. But of late, the area has undergone ‘gentrification’ and become quite a ‘trendy locale. As the Lower Marsh Market website related:
“The current buildings on Lower Marsh Street represent many different phases of development and several styles. Amongst the diverse buildings are some interesting examples of early nineteenth century vernacular architecture, continuing the Georgian vernacular patterns and layouts of the eighteenth century. Good examples of shop-fronts from different eras are present on the street and courts and alleyways and some original paving can still be seen on streets off to the sides. This variety gives the area great character, enhanced by the market.”
In 2015 and 2016, the market took first place in the shopping category of The Time Out Love London Awards. Next time we go to a matinée at either The Young Vic or The Old Vic, we will leave early enough to take a look at the market.
IN CENTRAL AHMEDABAD, a large city in India’s state of Gujarat, there is a curious café called Lucky. This popular eatery is not unusual because it does not serve coffee but because its tables and chairs are placed between Moslem graves. Lucky’s is sited on an old Moslem graveyard, but this does not put off a steady flow of customers from enjoying a wide variety of vegetarian snacks in this eatery. Closer to home, near the south side of London’s Lambeth Bridge, there is another café sited on a former graveyard. Unlike Lucky in Ahmedabad, which is housed in an architecturally unremarkable building, the café in Lambeth, The Garden Museum Café, is a marvellous example of contemporary architecture.
Café at The Garden Museum in London
The café, completed in 2018, is at the east end of the Church of St Marys, Lambeth, which now serves as the home of The Garden Museum. The church stands next to the main Tudor entrance of Lambeth Palace. The tower was built in about 1378. The rest of the church contains structural elements that were built in later eras. Appropriately for a museum dedicated to gardening history, the repurposed Church of St Mary’s is the burial place of the famous gardener and plant collector, John Tradescant the Elder (c1570s-1638). It is also the final resting place of Captain William Bligh (1754-1817) of The Bounty Mutiny (1789) fame. This famous mariner owned a house in Lambeth. Customers of the café do not sit on the graves of these two well-known persons, but on gravestones that, unlike the graves at Lucky in Ahmedabad which are raised above the ground, are level with the rest of the café’s floor.
The graves at Lucky in Ahmedabad are coffin shaped and probably contain the remains of the deceased. I am not sure whether there are human remains beneath the grave slabs in the floor of the café in Lambeth. A young waiter, whom I asked, was concerned to reassure me that he believed that there are no skeletons beneath the gravestones upon which customers walk and sit. I wonder whether this is really the case.
The Garden Museum was founded in 1977 by Rosemary and John Nicholson in order to preserve the church, which was due for demolition (https://gardenmuseum.org.uk/the-museum/history/). In 2015, the museum was closed for a year and a half whilst it was being redeveloped. Part of the improvements made was the construction of an extension at the eastern end of the retired church. The new construction, designed by Christopher Bradley-Hole and Dan Pearson, includes the café and other structures that together surround a new courtyard that contains a lovely garden, The Sackler Garden designed by Dan Pearson. It contains several tombs including that of the Tradescant family and of Captain Bligh.
The café borders the western side of the courtyard. Its mainly glass walls provide good views of the garden, the buildings across the river and the leafy remains of the churchyard west of the café. Where there is no glass, the walls are covered with overlapping brown coloured metal panels. Serving great coffee and both snacks and meals, the legs of the chairs and tables rest on the gravestones that form part of the floor.
Compared with Lucky, which is in a very busy part of Ahmedabad, the Garden Museum café, although close to a busy main road, is far more peaceful. However, both are delightful places to enjoy refreshments.
yamey 