STOP: Hyde Park

LOCATION: Entrance to the park

 

Henry VIII acquired Hyde Park from the monks of Westminster Abbey in 1536; he and his court were often to be seen on thundering steeds in the hunt for deer.

 

It remained a private hunting ground until James I came to the throne and permitted limited access. The King appointed a ranger, or keeper, to take charge of the park. It was Charles I who changed the nature of the park completely. He had The Ring (north of the present Serpentine boathouses) created and in 1637 opened the park to the general public.

 

In 1665, the year of the Great Plague, many citizens of London fled the City to camp on Hyde Park, in the hope of escaping the disease.

 

Towards the end of the 17th century William III moved his court to Kensington Palace. He found that his walk to St James's was very dangerous, so he had 300 oil lamps installed, creating the first artificially lit highway in the country. This route later became known as Rotten Row, which is a corruption of the French 'Route de Roi', or King's Road.

 

Queen Caroline, wife of George II, had extensive renovations carried out and in the 1730s had The Serpentine, a lake of some 11.34 hectares, created.

 

Hyde Park became a venue for national celebrations. In 1814 the Prince Regent organised fireworks to mark the end of the Napoleonic Wars, in 1851 (during Queen Victoria's reign) the Great Exhibition was held and in 1977 a Silver Jubilee Exhibition was held in honour of Queen Elizabeth II's 25 years on the throne.

 

In 1866 Edmund Beales' Reform League marched on Hyde Park where great scuffles broke out between the League and the police. Eventually the Prime Minister allowed the meetings to continue unchallenged and since 1872, people have been allowed to speak at Speaker's Corner on any subject they want to.

 

The Lido was set up by George Lansbury, the first Commissioner of Works, in 1930 and in warm weather is used for sunbathing and swimming.

 

TOILETS IN HYDE PARK

 

STOP: St George’s Gardens

LOCATION: Handel Street

 

The three-acre St George's Gardens were once a meadow, but were bought in 1713 to make a burial ground for two nearby churches – the Nicholas Hawksmoor church, St George’s Bloomsbury, and the church of St George the Martyr in Queen’s Square, now known as St George’s Holborn. The burial ground opened in 1714. The two cemeteries were originally divided by a brick wall and had separate entrances. The Gardens remain consecrated ground.

 

This was one of the first burial grounds built away from its church. London was growing fast and churchyards were overflowing. Burials moved to what was then open country so a high protective wall was built, to keep out body-snatchers who supplied a nearby anatomy school. The burial ground’s wall plan may also have been the work of Hawksmoor.

 

Among the many hundreds buried here was Zachary Macaulay (1768-1838), a leading figure in the campaign to abolish the slave trade in 1807, and editor of the Anti-Slavery Reporter. As a young man, he had worked on a plantation and witnessed the horrors of slavery at first hand. He was also governor of a colony of freed slaves in Africa. He died in 1838, five years after slavery was finally made illegal.

 

As London grew the burial ground overflowed, like the churchyards before it, and it was closed around 1854. 

 

The area was poor and without green spaces – Bloomsbury’s elegant squares were locked and used only by the rich. Old burial grounds were the only public spaces. Campaigners including Miranda Hill (Kyrle Society) and Octavia Hill fought to create ‘outdoor sitting rooms’ to ‘bring beauty home to the poor’.  St George’s Gardens were opened in 1884.

 

In 1997, after becoming very run-down, the gardens were one of a group of Camden’s historic parks to receive lottery funding under the Urban Parks Programme. The restored Gardens opened in Spring 2001. They are still maintained by Camden Council.

 

STOP: Culpeper Community Garden

LOCATION: Dewey Road

 

The idea of creating this garden came to school-teacher, Anthea Douglas, in 1982 when she was cycling to work. Just by chance she looked through a hole in the wall and saw a derelict bomb site.

 

She discovered the street (now long gone) was named after Nicholas Culpeper, the great seventeenth century English herbalist whose printing press was in nearby Clerkenwell.

 

At the time Anthea was working at the White Lion Free School, near the Angel, an area notorious for dense building and traffic, with little green space. The idea of making a garden caught the imagination of her colleagues. Nearby Penton Primary School joined the scheme, and the two schools pulled together to raise money and persuade the council to rent them the site.

 

Anthea insisted that Culpeper principles should follow the ethos of the White Lion School, namely a place without hierarchy, where everyone’s skills are valid, where all members are involved in making decisions, and no one feels threatened. 

 

While Culpeper has changed over the years, this early ethos (with adherence to organic principles) is still practised. Friendliness, tolerance, and a relaxed atmosphere are still the garden’s greatest strengths.

 

Over a period of about eight months, they built walls, levelled the land, put up fences and laid pipes. Then it was time for the school children. 

 

About a hundred young ‘tree sisters’ and ‘tree brothers’ poured in to help plant the trees, now mature, which are so much a feature of the garden today. Communal areas were marked out. And plots were allocated to local people without gardens who lived within the square mile around the site.

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STOP: Barnsbury Wood Nature Reserve

LOCATION: Crescent Street

 

London’s smallest local nature reserve.  Barnsbury Wood was originally a garden belonging to George Thornhill who built the surrounding houses in the 1840s. The area was eventually abandoned to nature and then became woodland.  It is home to a range of wildlife including long-tailed tit, lesser stag beetle, common toad and the sixteen-spot ladybird. 

 

Barnsbury Wood is used by Islington’s environmental education staff to run activities for school children.  It’s open on Tuesday afternoons all year and Saturday afternoons in the summer months.

 

STOP: Spa Fields

LOCATION: Skinner Street

 

Historically this area is known for the Spa Fields riots of 1816 and an Owenite community which existed there between 1821 and 1824. The park was once 14 hectares but was mostly built over in the 19th century and is now just a small park.

 

In the 18th century it was a disreputable area, known for "the rude sports that were in vogue, such as duck-hunting, prize-fighting, bull-baiting, and others of an equally demoralising character", and "seems to have been much infected by sneaking footpads, who knocked down pedestrians passing to and from London, and despoiled them of hats, wigs, silver buckles, and money”.  The moral tone gradually improved after the Spa Fields Chapel was erected in 1777.

 

The Owenite community was based on the cooperative ideas of Robert Owen and was the brainchild of George Mudie (b. 1788). 

 

In 1821, a group of printers met to discuss Mudie's proposals for a community. The plan was soon formulated to create a 'Co-operative and Economical Society' of 200 families. The male members had to contribute a guinea to the central fund. There would be a communal kitchen and dining hall, plus there were plans for a school as well. The committee calculated that the community would save around £8,000 per year through its own manufacture of various items that it would use. Mudie believed that the community would be able to become independent.

 

By December 1821, the 'Spa Fields Congregational families' had begun to live together. The women worked from 6am to 8pm, and the children were also kept busy "without a moment's intermission". The community advertised various services that they would provide, such as cobbling, painting, haberdashery, etc., and a school.

 

The community also set up a 'monitor' system whereby each monitor looked after one person and acted as his 'confessor'.

 

The community last until 1824. The reasons for its demise are not known.

 

STOP: Postman’s Park

LOCATION: King Edward Street

 

Postman's Park comprises three former burial grounds.  St Botolph's Aldersgate was a wealthy parish and is historically significant as the site of the evangelical conversions of John Wesley and Charles Wesley.  The church was first mentioned in 1493, but the building here now dates from 1790. St Leonard, Foster Lane and Christ Church Greyfriars were the other two burial grounds that form the park.

 

The churchyard was originally 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.  

 

The severe lack of burial space in London meant that graves would be frequently reused, 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 above that of the Christ Church Greyfriars burial ground, and 4 feet above that of the St Leonard, Foster Lane, burial ground.

 

Following cholera epidemics an act was passed in 1851 which prohibited new burials in what were then the built-up areas of London. 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 to a public park. Progress in clearing and covering the burial ground was slow, and it was not until 1880 that the churchyard was reopened as a public park.

 

The park became extremely popular with workers in the GPO building built on the park’s southern edge in 1829 , and soon became known as "Postman's Park”.

 

In 1887, a letter was published in The Times from the painter and sculptor George Frederick Watts, proposing a scheme to commemorate the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria. He 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.

 

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 tiles. 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 western entrance of Postman's Park and the elaborate Gothic drinking fountain attached to the railings are Grade II listed.  The Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice itself is also Grade II listed; although considered of little architectural merit, the register notes that it is "listed as a curiosity”.

 

STOP: Crossbones

LOCATION: Redcross Way

 

Cross Bones is a disused post-medieval burial ground.  Up to 15,000 people are believed to have been buried here. It was closed in 1853.

 

Cross Bones was established originally as an unconsecrated graveyard for prostitutes, or "single women", who were known locally as "Winchester Geese" because they were licensed by the Bishop of Winchester to work within the area know as the Liberty of the Clink.

 

The area lay outside the jurisdiction of the City of London and as a consequence became known for its brothels and theatres, as well as bull and bear baiting - activities not permitted within The City itself. By 1769 it had become a pauper's cemetery servicing St. Saviour's parish.

 

A dig in 1992 uncovered 148 graves, dating from between 1800 and 1853.

 

Over one third of the bodies were perinatal (between 22 weeks gestation and seven days after birth), and a further 11 percent were under one year old. The adults were mostly women aged 36 and older.

 

A short memorial ceremony is held at the gates on the 23rd of each month in the early evening.

 

STOP: Red Cross Gardens 

LOCATION: Redcross Way

 

Red Cross Garden started life as an idea from the Society of Friends (Quakers). In 1762 they took out a lease on the west side of Red Cross Street (today’s Red Cross Way) in order to build a meeting house on some land they already owned and used as a burial ground.

 

The ground was closed for burials in 1794 and the meeting house was enlarged in 1799 and was in use until 1860. On the south wall is attached an 18th-century coat of arms but no inscription. It probably came from one of the tombs in the burial ground.

 

In 1887 part of the gardens were bought by Julie, Countess of Dulcie on the advice of Octavia Hill. Octavia Hill was one of the founding members of the National Trust and a social reformer. She was a firm believer in quality housing for the the working poor and Red Cross Gardens was one of her flagship projects, providing an open space for the overcrowded and often unsanitary conditions of Southwark locals.

 

As well as the garden she also commissioned six cottages overlooking Red Cross Gardens. They date from 1887.  These cottages were model dwellings and were attached to a community centre. The garden was intended by Hill as an ‘open air sitting room for the tired inhabitants of Southwark’. They embody her idea of wholesome housing and their gabled fronts and bay windows have a strong Arts and Craft influence.

 

The garden was restored to its original Victorian form in 2005.

 

STOP: St Dunstan in the East

LOCATION: St Dunstan’s Hill

 

The church was named for St Dunstan, a tenth century monk with a colourful past. He survived brushes with black magic, leprosy, and the Devil himself to become Archbishop of Canterbury. 

 

St Dunstan in the East, following the saint’s example, boasts its own difficult history.

 

Like so much of the City, it was badly damaged by the Great Fire of London. As a consolation prize, it got a new tower built by Sir Christopher Wren, but the misfortunes didn’t stop. The tower and steeple, along with the north and south walls, are the only parts that still stand today – the rest having been wiped out in 1941 by a German bomb.

 

Deciding it had become too much of a hassle to rebuild, the Anglican Church was forced to abandon it. In 1967 the City of London turned the ruins of St Dunstan into a public park, and the Church’s loss became London’s gain.

 

STOP: Bunhill Fields

LOCATION: City Road

 

Originally a stretch of open land, Bunhill Fields got its name from its use as a burial ground during the Saxon period and a macabre event that took place in the mid-sixteenth century.  Cartloads of bones from the charnel house at St Paul’s Cathedral were transported out of the city and dumped in such large quantities that they formed a hill of bones, with a thin layer of soil covering the mound.  This “Bone Hill” was large enough to accommodate three windmills on top, which were presumably installed to make the most of the elevated ground.

 

The charnel house at St Paul’s had been used since the 13th Century to store old bones disturbed by later burials.  During this period the concept of purgatory had become an official part of Church doctrine and it became acceptable to disinter human remains when no flesh remained on the skeleton, as it was believed that the soul only remained with the body as long as there was flesh on the bones (cremation was not authorised for Christians at this time).  This had a useful practical application as old graves could be reused for new burials, freeing up space in churchyards.

 

The dry bones removed from old graves were then stored in charnel houses and this practice continued in Britain until the Reformation.  After the Reformation, the use of charnel houses was seen as Popish so most of them were demolished and their contents removed, which helps to explain why the human remains were removed from St Paul’s and taken to Bunhill Fields.

 

In 1665, a century or so after the Bone Hill was created, Bunhill Fields was given authorisation to be used as a plague pit.  The rural location of Bunhill Fields, only a short distance north of the city, made it an idea location for mass burials.  

 

In 1853, Bunhill Fields was deemed to be full, having received around 120,000 burials since the 1660s.  Around this time, churchyards and older burial grounds were being closed and large, suburban cemeteries were being planned and laid out.  The last burial in Bunhill Fields took place in January 1854.

 

Bunhill Fields as we see it today is a postwar creation – heavy bombing during the Second World War prompted major landscaping work and the northern part of the burial ground was cleared of its memorials, leaving a large grassy area lined with benches.

 

In 2011, Bunhill Fields was designated as a Grade I listed cemetery, affording it special protection.  In addition to this, 75 individual monuments are also Grade II listed. 

 

STOP: St Mary’s Secret Garden

LOCATION: Pearson Street

 

St Mary's Secret Garden is a horticultural project often described as a peaceful oasis in the middle of a very busy area of the capital.  

 

It is approximately 0.7 of an acre in size and has been developed to create a diverse green space.  There are four interlinking areas - a natural woodland, a food growing area (including vegetable beds, soft fruit and fruit trees), a herb and sensory garden and an area of herbaceous borders.  There is a fully accessible classroom and a large greenhouse.  Organic principles are used in maintaining the site and to encourage wildlife and biodiversity within the garden.  

 

St Mary's Secret Garden provides a diversity of projects including accredited horticultural education, therapeutical sessions, volunteering, an annual flower show and work experience for students and school children. 

 

STOP: Hackney City Farm

LOCATION: Haggerston Park

 

Hackney City Farm was established in 1984. It was an initiative brought to life by enthusiastic members of the local community who were inspired by the success of the newly formed Kentish Town City Farm. Their aim was to give youngsters and local people the opportunity to experience farming. 

 

In the early 1800s the site was occupied by farmers and market gardeners supplying fresh produce to the city of London. Later as the area became built up, a brewery occupied the site and beer was brewed from late 1880 until the 1930s. West’s brewery as it was then, supplied beer to its own public houses in Hackney Road and nearby Bethnal Green. The water used in the brewing process was supplied by a well, still present today (although capped).

 

Over the next ten years, various businesses were based at the site ranging from furniture makers to button manufacturers. From 1940 onwards the farm was occupied by the Jeakins Family who ran a road haulage company. 

 

Later in 1982 local people formed the farm, and kept a few animals in the nearby Covent gardens. Two years later Hackney City Farm took over its present site and was given one hundred years lease by Hackney Council.

 

TOILETS IN LONDON FIELDS
 

STOP: London Fields

LOCATION: Just after leaving Broadway Market

 

In 1275, the area now known as London Fields was recorded as common pasture land adjoining Cambridge Heath. The park was first recorded by name in 1540; in the singular as 'London Field'. Still common ground, it was used by drovers to pasture their livestock before taking them to market in London. 

 

By the late 19th century the name had become pluralised to 'London Fields' and parts of the Fields were being lost to piecemeal development. There was a threat of comprehensive development of the park in 1860 but this threat was averted.

 

In WW2 the park hosted an anti-aircraft battery in the south-west corner (the tarmac is still visible under the grass) and a bomb shelter in the vicinity of the tennis courts.

 

The area was heavily bombed during the Blitz and houses along the northern and eastern edges of the park were among those destroyed. These houses had been built on land that was originally part of London Fields and the land was subsequently restored to the park. The previous boundary is marked by a wide arc of Plane trees.

 

London Fields features a cricket pitch, a heated 50m lido and lido cafe, grass areas, designated barbecue area, a small BMX track, tennis courts, a table tennis table, toilet blocks and two children's play areas. In 2013 the Council turned a sandy, gritty area of London Fields into a pictorial meadow the size of a football pitch. A game of cricket was played in the park as early as 1802, and the cricket square on London Fields continues to host competitive games throughout the summer. Several teams use the park as their home pitch, most notably London Fields CC.

 

There is a public house called the Pub on the Park on the east side of the park; this was opened in 1855 and known as the Queen Eleanor until 1992. It’s also the starting point for the Dunwich Dynamo.

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STOP: Victoria Park

LOCATION: At the north east of the park close to the London Bridge alcoves

​

This is one of London's most visited green spaces with approximately 9 million visitors every year. The park covers 213 acres and opened to the public in 1845.

 

In the latter half of the 19th Century, Victoria Park became an essential amenity for the working classes of the East End. For some East End children in the 1880s, this may have been the only large stretch of uninterrupted greenery they ever encountered. Facilities like the bathing pond, later superseded by the park lido (closed 1986, demolished soon after) would have introduced many to swimming in an era when many public baths were still simply communal washing facilities.

 

Victoria Park's reputation as the 'People's Park' grew as it became a centre for political meetings and rallies of all stripes, perhaps exceeding in importance the more well-known Hyde Park in this regard. 

 

The park occupies the interface between Tower Hamlets — sunk in poverty in the 19th century and with a strong tradition of socialist and revolutionary agitation — and Hackney, more genteel, but heir to a centuries-old legacy of religious dissent and non-conformism that led to its own fierce brand of reformism. So it should come as no surprise that the scene at the numerous Speaker's Corners was a lively one.

 

Two pedestrian alcoves are located at the east end of the park near the Hackney Wick war memorial where they were placed in 1860. They are surviving fragments of the old medieval London Bridge, demolished in 1831, and were part of the 1760 refurbishment of the 600-year-old bridge, by Sir Robert Taylor and George Dance the Younger. They provided protection for pedestrians on the narrow carriageway. They have been Grade II listed since 1951.

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STOP: Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park

LOCATION: The Greenway

 

This is a purpose-built site for the 2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics, situated adjacent to the Stratford City development. It contains the Olympic stadium, now known as the London Stadium (the home ground of West Ham FC), and the Olympic swimming pool and velodrome together with the athletes' Olympic Village and several other Olympic sporting venues and the London Olympics Media Centre. 

 

It was simply called The Olympic Park during the Games but was later renamed to commemorate the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II (though it is not an official Royal Park of London).

 

The park is overlooked by the ArcelorMittal Orbit, an observation tower and Britain's largest piece of public art. Orbit was designed by Turner-Prize winning artist Sir Anish Kapoor and Cecil Balmond of Arup Group, an engineering firm. The project came about after Mayor of London Boris Johnson and Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell decided in 2008 that the Olympic Park needed "something extra". 

 

Designers were asked for ideas for an "Olympic tower" at least 100 metres high: Orbit was the unanimous choice. Kapoor and Balmond believed that Orbit represented a radical advance in the architectural field of combining sculpture and structural engineering, and that it combined both stability and instability in a work that visitors can engage with and experience via an incorporated spiral walkway. 

 

It has been both praised and criticised for its bold design, and has especially received criticism as a vanity project of questionable lasting use or merit as a public art project. It cost over £19 million.

 

The structure incorporates the world's tallest and longest tunnel slide at 178 metres as a way to attract more visitors to the tower. The slide includes transparent sections to give a "different perspective" of the twisting red tower and was completed in June 2016. This follows an option to abseil down the tower, introduced in 2014.

 

The ride ends at View Tube cafe