Park of the week

140. St George's Gardens

St George's Gardens is a public park in Bloomsbury. All of its entrances are down quiet side streets so isn’t somewhere you would necessarily stumble upon. In fact, I must’ve passed it many times as a student in the seventies, but even though it was next to my London Uni college in Brunswick Square, I never noticed it.

The Gardens were once the 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 land was bought in 1713 and the burial ground opened in 1714.

This was one of the first burial grounds away from a church. London was growing rapidly, and churchyards were overflowing. Like nearly all inner-city burial grounds, the sheer number of bodies meant that the graveyard had to be closed in 1855. It was turned into a public park in 1884, as part of the movement led by activists such as Octavia Hill, who went on to co-found the National Trust, to create ‘open air sitting rooms’ for the people of London. 

The Gardens were Grade 2 listed in 1987. In 1997, after becoming very run down, the Gardens were awarded Lottery funding for renovation, and reopened in 2001. Although open as a park to visit, the Gardens remain consecrated ground.

Paths wind through, with little corners to explore. There are also lawn areas with many surviving graves and monuments, such as grave of Anna Gibson (1659-1727). Before marrying her surname had been Cromwell. She was the sixth daughter of Richard Cromwell and granddaughter to Oliver Cromwell, both Lord Protectors of England.

This terracotta statue depicts Euterpe, one of the nine muses in Ancient Greek mythology, goddesses of music. It once sat, with statues of the eight others, on the front of the Apollo Inn on the corner of Tottenham Court Road and Torrington Place. When the Inn was demolished in 1961 for an extension of Heal’s department store, the owner of the shop, Anthony Heal, presented the statue to the Borough and it was placed in the garden.

There are entrances on Handel Street, Heathcote Street and Sidmouth Street, WC1.

Judith Field

St. George's Gardens, Wakefield Street, London WC1H 8HZ