Park of the week

213. Edward Square

Edward Square, in Islington, was built in 1853 as a square of houses around an enclosed garden. The garden was opened in 1888 as one of London’s first public gardens. 

In 1963, following the clearance of bomb-damaged houses, the London County Council decided the site would be a suitable one on which to build a new secondary school. This plan ended up falling through due to a declining school population in Islington. 

By the 1980s the green space, between the surviving houses, had become overgrown and neglected and was under threat of being developed again.  Local people campaigned for funding to save the space. Islington has the least amount of green space per resident of any London borough, so every patch of grass is precious. They ended up being given a Single Regeneration Budget funding allowance from the King’s Cross Partnership and Islington Council to save and restore the square. It was redeveloped with an emphasis on involvement of younger users. 

Part of the regeneration was the painting of a mural showing The Tolpuddle Martyr, a group of six agricultural labourers from the village of Tolpuddle in Dorset. In 1834 they were arrested for essentially starting a trade union and sentenced to transportation to Australia. On 21st April 1834 a huge group gathered nearby where the Edward Square now is, on an area known as Copenhagen Fields, to peacefully protest the deportation.

The landscaping includes an orchard and meadow area, a cobbled path and paving slabs planted with herbs. The square is designed in four areas, with two lawns either side of a paved area with play equipment and seating. A low wall around the lawn areas features engraved lettering in concrete with words about the square by poet laureate Andrew Motion in 2000.

The whole poem goes like this:
 

Light licks its fingertips and turns a page
of earth - this earth packed down beneath us now:
it gleams of Romans facing Boadicea,
flows over Chartists on their green-sprigged stage,
picks up a railway-tremor in a terrace row,
then leaps to hold a jump-jet in thin air.
 All dead, all living, all a concrete sign
of freedom learning how to find its aim:
to prove our lives our own - you've yours, I've mine -
and each one different but each the same.

There are no café, toilets or car park. We managed to park on a street around the corner, but this was on a Sunday. It might be considerably harder to park nearby during the week.

Judith Field

Edward Square, London N1 0SP