Sticks in the Smoke 44: Millbank Gardens

Transportation and ‘Walking in the Air!’ (Wednesday 21 December 2016)

A winter solstice leaden sky threatens rain as I approach Millbank Gardens, along John Islip Street and behind Tate Britain. The parade of roadside plane trees are leafless, their pollarded branches reaching up like gnarly arms shaking fists to the sky. Seeds dangle like Christmas baubles. Below, leaf imprints in the tarmac are like faded fragments of an antique tapestry.

Millbank is a half mile or so riverside sweep south of Westminster, deriving its name from a water mill built by the monks of Westminster Abbey (see Sticks in the Smoke 39), that stood at the outflow of the River Tyburn into the Thames. Prior to the 1800s, this low and marshy piece of land was sparsely populated, merging into riverside mudflats, where mists would rise, pierced by the echoing call of snipe and the cries of gulls. Rough farmsteads squatted in these boggy meadows, cattle grazing down to the water’s edge.

This ground was long considered unsuitable for housing or development. But the perfect place, away from the city, for incarcerating enemies and undesirables, where

considerations for health and wellbeing were not high on the agenda. In 1651, four thousand Scottish Royalists were captured during the Battle of Worcester (the final battle of the English Civil War). They were force marched the 100 miles to Millbank and held here in a makeshift prison camp, where 1200 of these bone- weary prisoners died and were buried in mass graves. The survivors were sold as slaves and transported to the plantations of Barbados. Many of whom perished under creaking decks on the long ocean voyages.

Two pieces of lime green training equipment have been installed on the central terrace of the garden (installed by The Great Outdoor Gym Company). They look like user- friendly torture devices. A personal trainer in pink top is putting her two clients through their paces: one a smallish young woman, the other a large man, like a bear in sports gear. As I walk the boundary paths, the trainer’s antipodean twang bounces around the garden: “Ok guys just 20 more seconds now……keep with it!” “C’mon! Don’t think about it, just do it!” I set up my easel and drawing things (that’s my exercise for the day!) next to the oblong brick pavilion, in case it starts to rain and I have to scoop my things under cover. I glance over: they’re now doing bench presses on the park benches.

Guided by the spirit of Christmas, I choose a large variegated holly bush as my foreground and draw the view into the eastern half of this garden (see drawing above) where four Whitebeams (I think) grow from the lawns, displaying red clouds of delicate berries. I can just make out bright green bulb shoots cautiously emerging from a bare rectangle of earth. In the background an upper terrace behind ironwork balustrades, with large terracotta pots containing trimmed standard hollies. A fringe border of laurels and palms and evergreen shrubs. Graffiti adorns several of the rubbish bins. The trio have just finished doing crunches amongst the leaf litter. The large bearlike man lies on his back panting and groaning loudly!

These gardens stand exactly central to where the Millbank Penitentiary was built in the early 19th century. This massive eight- sided structure covered a site of 18 acres. It rose grim and fortress- like from the muddy ground, having to be built on a concrete ‘raft’ to stop it subsiding. Six cell blocks heaved outwards, from a central circular core, where the main terrace of the gardens are today. It contained a chapel and the governor’s residence. Millbank was the largest prison in Britain, housing 1100 male and female convicts. However, the inherent dampness of this place seeped into the mildewed walls and, from its earliest days, fostered a general unhealthiness, contributing to epidemics of dysentery, scurvy and depression. In the 1840s, because of this, and the high running costs, long term prisoners were moved to other prisons and, this became a holding depot for convicts prior to transportation. They were held in solitary confinement for three months until their destination was decided (mostly Australia). After the brutal policy of

transportation ended in 1867, Millbank reverted to being a local prison, before finally closing its heavy studded doors in 1890.

You can still see the octagonal impression left by this structure on today’s street plan here, an indelible geometric ghost from a grim past.

A blackbird flies a blue-black flash into the holly bush and chirrups loudly from its interior. A man comes through the gate, wearing a tall white knitted hat and clutching a whisky bottle. Tightly. He talks at me for 5 minutes in non-sequiturs, about how he used to draw but was told his line was too heavy; about the steep rise in council tax; and the cost of getting a haircut. The scotch in the half full bottle sloshing as he speaks (Later, while visiting the Tate, I see him curled in a booth seat opposite the Tate cloakroom, hat off, and fast asleep!).

The forbidding prison walls and buildings were demolished and the site, now drained, was broken into large plots, subdivided by a grid of streets, with John Islip Street (named to commemorate John Islip, abbot of Westminster in the 16th century) bisecting north- south. For most of the 1890s and into the new century, the site echoed with the clang of construction; materials offloaded from barges moored where, only 40 years earlier, chains of convicts were being loaded onto transportation ships. The first building to be opened faced out across the Thames in its classical porticoed poise. This was the National Gallery of British Art, later to be known as the Tate Gallery (after its founder Sir Henry Tate, the sugar magnate) and more recently, Tate Britain. Its back is turned to Millbank Gardens; the only concession

to art back here is a statue of John Everett Millais, Pre-raphaelite painter, brandishing his palette and standing sentinel on a high plinth.

Next to the Tate, and filling the southern corner of the site, the Royal Army Medical College was built in a grand mix of Baroque and French Renaissance style. Since 2005, the buildings have been home to Chelsea College of Arts.

Millbank gardens was laid out at the heart of the plan. A recreation breathing space for a new community of working families, housed in 17 redbrick mansion blocks, built by the LCC (London County Council) in the western half of the old prison footprint, using bricks salvaged from its rubble. Following Arts and Crafts Movement principles of design and respect for the individual, they welcomed their first tenants in 1903. Inspired by the proximity to the Tate, each block is named after an English artist. The gardens are overlooked by the Turner, Ruskin, Millais and Leighton Houses, which embrace the space and reflect a terracotta warmth even under today’s damp blanket of cloud.

The exercising trio have gone. Two young sisters wearing Rudolph antlers are now playing on the gym equipment, supervised by their Dad. They’re joyfully singing ‘Walking in the Air’.

(In his ‘Sticks in the Smoke’ project, Nick Andrew is visiting, researching and drawing a different public park or garden in Central London each week of 2016 and early 2017, leading to a collection of paintings exploring the theme of city green spaces from the perspective of a rural landscape painter. These will be shown in an exhibition in the Curwen Gallery London in April 2017.) www.nickandrew.co.uk

Millbank Gardens, John Islip St, London. SW1V 3SG
Open 8am – dusk
Google earth view here

Sticks in the Smoke 43: Tower Hill and Trinity Square Gardens

Wishes in the soil and memories of 36,000 (Wednesday 14 December 2016)

Emerging from Tower Hill Station into a whiff of traffic fumes with a hint of riverside aroma, which penetrate the chill of this bright day; I’m faced with a truncated fragment of the ancient City Wall, rising to over 10 metres: a curtain of ragstone and red tile- strata of many centuries; almost half its height surviving from Roman times. This wall and its defensive moat (known later as the Citie’s Ditch), was originally built around 200AD. A statue of the Roman Emperor Trajan stands proudly in front of this wall and gestures with his right forefinger (see photo below: an 18th century bronze, allegedly discovered in a scrap yard in Southampton by Reverend T B ‘Tubby’ Clayton, founder of the Toc H charity). His pointing finger leads the eye

towards the raised walkway through to Tower Hill Gardens on the other side of the wall.

The wall shades a segment of the low grassy rise of Tower Hill. Play equipment is set into patchy grass. I set up to draw the view from here across to the walls and turrets of the Tower of London. But the sun, strong to the south, flickering and dazzling through the mass of hanging plane twiggery, turns the ancient ramparts to a grey- violet silhouette and I have to peer hard to make out its many windows and battlements. And over to the west, the Shard is a soaring blade of pure glassy blue. The relentless flow of traffic rumbles the dual carriageway road between, and pulls to a halt at the lights at the junction here. The squeal of brakes a persistent theme.

The garden is busy with tourists. A family sit with a picnic while young daughter whooshes down the slide and then scrambles back up the earthy slope to go again.

Tower Hill is less a hill and more a gentle rise up from the banks of the Thames, but elevated enough to offer commanding upstream and downstream views, which made this

an ideal defensive location (there is talk and some evidence for an early Celtic fortress here). And a good strategic position just within the eastern walls of Roman Londinium.

After the decline of Roman rule, followed by 400 year of neglect and Viking occupation, London’s walls were restored by Alfred the Great in the 890s. The Tower of London was built by the Normans soon after their conquest of Britain in 1066. Surrounded by a moat and high walls, the White Tower was the castle’s keep, built to be impregnable and commanding. It was a powerful symbol of the power of the new King William and was used as a royal residence. Over succeeding centuries its function changed variously to a prison, an armoury, a treasury, a private zoo for exotic animals (including lions), to house the Royal Mint, as a public records office and to guard the Crown Jewels.

The area around it became known as the ‘Tower Liberties’, an area that could not be built on, defined by the distance an arrow could be fired from the Tower. So Tower Hill remained undeveloped. A 20 metre wide stretch of water, known as the Citie’s Ditch, ran through here, at the foot of the Wall (where the children’s playground now stands). It emptied through

a channel into the Tower’s moat. At that point, where now run buses and articulated lorries, was once where tracks converged from the farms and villages outside the eastern city walls, to squeeze through a postern gate. Over the centuries, despite attempts to dredge and clear, it grew foul and choked with rubbish and waste. By 1700 the Citie’s Ditch had been filled in.

The screech of a child pierces through the traffic noise: the sliding girl isn’t happy about being wrenched away from her slide. Then a loud slapping noise! I look across: the mother is crashing the soles of her daughter’s shoes together to get rid of the accumulated mud.

I’m aware of a dark haired young woman wearing a light brown beret wandering around the shrubs and amongst the play equipment, searching the ground, picking things up and dropping them into her bag. After a while she goes to sit on the roundabout, sets it gently turning and films a dizzy 360 degree view of the world on her phone: Roman wall / trees / slide / scaffolded office block / person drawing / more trees / lorry / Tower of London / bus stop / Roman wall again / slide again etc…

Drawing finished (see image at top), I hastily pack my things. The woman has gone and I’m

curious about what she was picking up. I go over and very quickly find some coins. I pick them up: one of the old large 5p (shilling sized) coins, smeared in mud. And there’s a shiny 2p coin. And then I see more. And more! Lots of different coins all around: some bright and new on the surface, and some hidden, just circular edges poking out of the earth. I prise up some more: old halfpenny pieces. I have a handful now and think about putting them in my pocket, but then start to wonder why coins have been thrown here apparently over a long period. Perhaps they’re offerings. Or wishes. I can’t take away people’s wishes! I throw them back on the ground and push them in with my heel (a mystery! Despite research, I haven’t been able to find any reference to a practice of coins being thrown here).

I wander the 2 minutes across to Trinity Square. A steaming americano bought from the Tower Hill Tram coffee stand to warm me up. Into this 1¼ acre space of lawn; winter bare trees and evergreen shrubs around the edge. I follow the perimeter path around to the site of Tower Hill Scaffold. From 1381 public executions were carried on this raised patch of rough ground. A permanent site was established a century later. Today marked out by cobbles and chains (see photo below), with plaques to commemorate those put to death on this poignant spot. I set up to lay this historic spot across the foreground of my drawing.

Executions were a popular but grisly spectator ‘sport’, with viewing stands, raucous crowds, street entertainers and vendors. Over 350 years, at least 125 prisoners, political and criminal, lost their heads here, most of them from the aristocratic classes, including Sir Thomas More (see ‘Sticks in the Smoke 35’ Ropers Garden) and Thomas Cromwell. In 1747 Simon Fraser, 11th Lord Lovat, was the last beheading to take place in Britain.

Apart from the carnival atmosphere of the public executions, Tower Hill had been a neglected piece of ground until, by the 18th century, local residents were getting annoyed at the dumping of rubbish, unlicensed quarrying, attacks by footpads and anti- social behaviour. Parliamentary Acts were passed authorising the creation of Trinity Square and surrounding streets. The gardens were laid out in 1795, overlooked by the neoclassical home of Trinity House (the charity dedicated to safeguarding shipping and seafarers), designed by Samuel Wyatt (innovative architect of lighthouses and industrial mills). He set out the gardens in the form of an oval, with a surrounding path, much as they are today. Its use was governed by strict bylaws, limited to permit holders and residents of the square. Other grand buildings around the square include the Port of London Authority Building, built in 1922 (by Sir Edwin Cooper) with its impressive classical frontage.

The maritime character of the square’s occupants made this a fitting location for memorials to the seamen of the Merchant Navy and fishing fleets lost in 20th Century wars. A large, classical temple, designed in the 20s by Sir Edwin Lutyens, bronze plaques engraved with the names of the 12,210 lost in the First World War, sits solid over my sketchbook page (see drawing at bottom). And the 8ft walls of a sunken garden behind me (see photo left), designed by Sir Edward Maufe, are set with bronze plaques to remember the 23,765 lost in the oceans during the Second World War, punctuated by 7 tall stone reliefs of allegorical figures representing the seven seas, by sculptor Charles Wheeler. The most recent addition at the east corner of the gardens, is a round memorial set at a keeling tilt, engraved with: ‘In Memory of those Merchant Seafarers Who Gave Their Lives to Secure the Freedom of the Falkland Islands in 1981’. With these sombre memorials and the Scaffold site, this place is definitely ‘park as Memento Mori’.

Smoke billows from one of the memorial temple’s porticos: a workman leans on its sill, puffing on an e- cigarette. As the light fades fast, the darkened pillars and turret turn into the superstructure of a great ship, steaming towards the sunset. I abandon painting and try to commit the changing colours to memory as the pinnacle roofs of Tower Bridge in the background catch the last russet rays of sun. And two vapour trails scratch a silver blue cross into the pink blush of the sky.

Tower Hill Garden, Tower Hill, London. EC3N 4DR
Unrestricted opening
Trinity Square Gardens, Tower Hill, London. EC3N 4DH
Open 8am – half hour before dusk
Google earth view here

Sticks in the Smoke 42: Powis Square Gardens, Notting Hill

Coco the Poodle and the Pantomime Donkey (Thursday 8 December 2016)

A damp-chilly sort of December day. On the way I window shop the eclectic independent stores and artisan bakeries of Portobello Road and a quick glance at the Joe Strummer mural (“without people you’re nothing”), before heading for Powis Square. We’re merely a pigeon’s hop from Colville Square Gardens (which I drew back in February for ‘Sticks in the Smoke’2), an almost identical, half- acre rectangle. A slight slope down to the south.

Bare plane tree branches tremble over the garden. Accumulations of mulchy leaves on the rough ground. This is a space for play and activity; spread over most of the top half a tarmac ball court with basketball net and goalmouth. The lower end is a playground with swings and slide and climbing nets. Rough concrete sculptural crags with scramble- through holes rise from the undulating ground. And a quirky little bronze of two figures (no indication of the sculptor), constructed from pipes and tubing and machinery parts, an Adam and Eve of the industrial age; lower edges and corners polished to a gleam by years of tiny stroking hands.

This was all farming land (part of the large Portobello Estate, that took its name in honour of the British naval victory at Porto Bello in Panama in 1739) until the mid nineteenth century, when improvements to roads and railway links meant that land values started to increase, luring speculating builders to bid for parcels of prime building land. In 1860, a young entrepreneur, George Tippett bought 25 acres which he reckoned would be most saleable as they were the closest plot to the City. This was quickly turned into a building site which became popularly known as Tippett’s Brick Fields. He built these streets of tall stuccoed terraces to a consistent design, aiming to cram as many properties as possible into the available space while still retaining a sense of elegance which he hoped would appeal to upper middle class families. The centre of the squares were laid out as private gardens with trees and lawns and gravel walks.

Tippett sold some of the houses he had built, but held on to the rest to lease out. His downfall came when, in the 1880s, he found it difficult to persuade many of the genteel leaseholders to renew: put off by the noise and bustle of the growing Portobello Street Market nearby and the influx of tradespeople, manual workers and immigrants which they felt ‘diluted the social tone of the neighbourhood‘. Poor George’s project ended in bankruptcy. His properties were taken on by Colville Estates, who started to subdivide them into flats or leased them as boarding houses or to institutions.

I balance my drawing things on the cross beam of a climbing frame and draw towards the upper part of the garden, and over the road to the Tabernacle Centre (originally an evangelical church built in the 1880s. Opened as the ‘Tab’, a Community Arts Centre and music venue in the 70s, since when it has staged acts including Misty in Roots, Joe Strummer, Brian Eno and Lily Allen). For much of the time there are only four other people in the garden: a father on his phone and his daughter in the playground; a young woman on a bench, wearing stripy fingerless gloves and matching hat, smoking and working at her laptop; and an older woman, dwarfed inside a big blue puffy coat, is throwing a ball for her little tartan jacketed poodle. She calls ‘C’mon Coco, fetch the ball!‘ But Coco ignores the ball and trots purposefully over and starts yapping up at me as I draw. Coco’s owner smiles nervously and apologises and drags the little dog away.

As the 1800s rolled to a close, Powis Square became increasingly multicultural. The Wren College was set up here as an exam crammer, particularly for the Indian civil service. It’s students occupied many of the nearby boarding houses and, for a while, the square became nicknamed ‘Little India’. Over the next half century, waves of immigration increased the ethnic diversity of this district. Walking through these gardens in the 20s and 30s, you’d be very likely to hear Russian, Polish and Yiddish spoken. And English in accents ranging from Irish to West Indian. Many of these new residents became prey to greedy and unscrupulous landlords and subletters, leading to a high turnover of occupancy and a steady degeneration of these tenements, small flats and bedsits. In the 50s and 60s this became the heart of Peter Rachman‘s shady and squalid slum empire. Several houses hosted unlicensed basement clubs. Drug dealing and prostitution were rife. Racial tensions in the summer of 1958 led to race riots, ignited by attacks from local white youths, with pitched battles and cars burning here and in surrounding streets.

The early 60s drew young political radicals, poets, artists and musicians into Notting Hill. Powis Square became a focus for hippy counterculture. The heady smoke of 60s idealism, dreams and passion wafted through this space. Brian Jones, founder of the Rolling Stones, lived here. As did the beat poet Michael Horowitz and photojournalist John ‘Hoppy’ Hopkins and fashion designer Ossie Clark. David Hockney had his studio here. Scenes in the 1970 film ‘Performance‘, starring Mick Jagger, were filmed in the square. The London Free School, a community action adult education project was set up here in 1966; foremost in the founding of the Notting Hill Carnival.

Throughout this time, the garden remained padlocked and private, overgrown and poorly maintained. After a number of local children were knocked down while playing in the surrounding streets, there were campaigns of loud and colourful marches for the opening of the garden as a safe playground for ‘local kids to generate more positive energy’. In the end the gates were forced open by activists dressed as gorillas, clowns and a pantomime donkey. Revellers poured in, celebratory bonfires were lit and the garden filled with festival fervour. This was viewed as more than just breaking into a private garden, it was seen as a small breach in the thick walls of the establishment (Poet and playwright Neil Oram decsribed it as ‘a tidal wave which is about to wash away the square world). As a result of this direct action in 1968, Kensington and Chelsea Council compulsarily purchased the space and formerly opened it for the whole community. A playground was built, the gardens were landscaped and replanted. Since then it’s been the venue for music festivals and events, including the World Music stage for the Notting Hill Carnival.

My eye is caught by a sudden flare of sunlight, breaking through the clouds and turning the Tabernacle’s tower spires momentarily to fire! As I scrabble in panic for my orange crayon, my cold, numb fingers knock the box off its precarious support and its contents scatter across the earth. I stoop to retrieve them. When I look back up the blaze of light has gone. The building settles back into its heavy Romanesque solidity as the day settles towards dusk. I look around and shiver. Apart from me the garden is empty.

Powis Square Gardens, Notting Hill, London. W11 2BN
Open 7.30am – dusk
Google earth view here

Sticks in the Smoke 41: Kensington Memorial Park

“Don’t you go taking our sunshine away with you!” (Thursday 1 December 2016)

A perfect blue hangs over this first day of winter as I take the turn into the park. I hear yells of schoolkids from the tennis courts and sharp shouts of encouragement from the teacher. Sounds of scuffing on tarmac and a ball bouncing hard. The air prickles with cold. In front is a wide expanse, 2 acres or so; shadows stretch long stripes from a regiment of bare Lombardy poplars alongside the path. They catch the sunlight and light up like skeletons of flames. I sit on a bench for a while and watch dog owners, scattered across the field, throwing balls for an assortment of breeds, who hare across the roughish grass to retrieve. The nearest dog, a kind of terrier, yaps enthusiastically as it bounces after the ball then leaps and catches mid air every time!

Rising behind the row of housebacks on the north, like the ghost of a drum, is the empty framework of one of the, now disused, Kensal Green gasometers.

Two hundred years ago this was still farmland, which had been carved out of the original Forest of Middlesex in Saxon times. Marshy pastures watered by the springs below Notting Hill, which gently seeped down to Counters Creek, just beyond the west flank of this park (Counters Creek now mostly underground until it drains into the Thames as Chelsea Creek). Grazing cattle knee deep in mud. This was known as Notting Barns Farm and had been inherited by the St Quintin family of Scampston Hall, Yorkshire, who grandly elevated its status to Notting Barns Manor. The farmhouse (or Manor House as the St Quintins preferred!) was only a couple of hundred metres south of here and still standing at the end of the 19th century. It was only after the 1860s, when the new Hammersmith and City railway opened up these fields to the city, that Colonel Matthew Chitty Downs St Quintin, in need of funds, leased the land to the entrepreneur Charles Henry Blake for housing development. To his credit, Colonel St Qunitin specified a high quality of housing design and amenties, which prevented these streets slumping into slumland, as happened in other parts of North Kensington by the mid 1900s. The family name endures in St Quintin Avenue and St Quintin Estate, south of the park.

It’s a busy afternoon despite the cold. Processions of schoolchildren to the sports fields. Trains of steamy breath. A few mums and toddlers in the large playground. Bright coloured space rocket skelter slides and climbing frames and springy animal bouncers (in summer, the waterpark opens for colourful cooling water play, with pools and fountains and waterjets and aquaslides). I stroll past the refreshments kiosk, shuttered like an off season seaside cafe, and up into the formal gardens. Shrubberies, lawns, a tall tree palm, central to circular beds, just planted out with winter bedding. At the top a pergola. A young couple entwined together on a bench. The girl sits across the boy’s knees, pummelling his shoulders with her fists and laughing! He impassive. In the middle of the lawn, an olive tree is silver blue in the sunlight, its trunk twisting like a knurled torso out of the thickness of a lavender bed. I want this in the foreground of my drawing, so set up my easel on the damp grass (see drawing at top).

After the 1st World War, this 7 acre piece of land was bought by the Kensington War Memorial Committee for £8,800 and handed over to the London County Council in 1923 to be laid out as much needed recreation land in this built up area, with children’s playground and sports fields. In 1925, part of the site on the south west corner, behind where the waterpark now stands, was sold off for the building of a children’s hospital, much supported by Princess Louise, daughter of Queen Victoria. It was a paediatric hospital for 40 years or so until the ’70s when it switched to geriatrics. Now the Princess Louise Nursing Home..

A group of teenage boys arrive piecemeal and gather under the pergola at the top of this formal garden. Loud and high spirited. I think it’s a regular hang out. Two of them arrive on motorbikes and have kept their helmets on. They walk over the grass to look at my drawing, a muffled: “nice, nice, really sick, man!” The young girl is shrieking and jumping up to reach her mobile phone that her boyfriend is holding out of reach..

The future of this park is uncertain for these informal park visitors, dog walkers, picnickers and school PE sessions; earlier, on the way in to the park my eye was caught by a laminated poster reading “PLEASE HELP SAVE OUR PARK”. A plan by Kensington and Chelsea Council to replace half the grass here with an artificial football pitch would make this space less of an attraction for most of the people I’ve seen here today. The consultation period ended the day before my visit and the proposals are now being considered. I’d love to be able to come back here in 5 or 10 years time and still watch dogs chasing balls through those long poplar shadows stretching across real rough green grass.

My fingers are getting numb with cold and I have a serious need to wrap them around a hot chocolate. As I pack my things, a broadly smiling park attendant in yellow hi-vis coat is cycling slowly around the paths on an inspection tour. He wobbles over on his bike and calls over cheerily: “How ya doing Bruv? Bee-utiful day! Don’t you go taking our sunshine away with you!”

Kensington Memorial Park, St Mark’s Road, London. W10
Open every day 7.30am – dusk
Google earth view here

Sticks in the Smoke 40: Golden Square, Soho, London

Delilah and the Giant Stiletto (Wednesday 23 November 2016)

Here, trapped between the ever busy parallels of (Upper and Lower) James and John Streets in the closely packed lattice of Soho, full of film and media organisations, theatre agents, publishers, art galleries, and an eclectic mix of cafes and restaurants, is a breathing space of trees, shrubs and flowerbeds. And more!

I arrive later than intended and feel under pressure to get my drawing done before precious daylight begins to fade. But as I turn the corner I have to stop and stare; Golden Square really is golden! Bathed in gold! Not from November sunlight (in short supply today), but from the canopy of deep yellow hornbeam foliage, still hovering there, although many leaves have taken the plunge already, blown into yellow drifts on the paving and, at this moment, being swept into a bin liner by a nonchalant gardener.

Until the mid 17th century this was mostly grazing pasture in a tract of farmland called ‘Windmill Fields’. It was acquired by a pair of brickmakers and canny building speculators who had an eye on the city’s relentless expansion, and especially the craving amongst the gentry for smart properties at London’s fringes. Their plans for the square had to conform to strict design, drainage and usage guidelines laid down by Sir Christopher Wren (Surveyor General of His Majesty’s Works). Permission was granted in 1673, but it took about 30 years for all four sides of the square, with its 39 houses, to be eventually built. The new square had been given the name Gelding Close, alluding to its farming origins, but was quickly changed to Golden Square when it was realised that perhaps an address meaning ‘castrated horse’ would not be the best selling point! The houses were quickly snapped up by the aristocracy, clergy and political and military bigwigs. But it’s heyday only lasted half a century as, by the mid 1700s, the more socially active families had moved west to the newer, grander and more fashionable honeypots, such as Mayfair.

I walk all four sides, peering through iron railings into the garden: a rough grassy margin surrounds a raised paved square, with chopped corners. Gates on all four sides lead up steps onto this stage. Seated figures on benches are hunched and huddled against the cold breeze. A close group of young men, collars turned up, smoking and laughing, seemingly unaware of the ensemble in front of them: a trio of striking bronzes of human torsos, one reaching up with tied wrists (Homage to Prisoners of War): a temporary display of work by sculptor Josie Spencer. Rising above, and central to the square, is a white stone statue, a regal figure, dressed as Julius Caesar, frozen in mid speech with right hand outstretched (thumb broken off), but looking too much like Tommy Cooper in Roman soldier garb, with bare paunch overhanging his gladiator skirt. A pigeon sits proudly on his head. On the ground below him a large, open discarded umbrella rocks against the shrubs.

But over there, on the other side, and dominating all, is a massive 6 foot high, blue steel stiletto shoe (titled ‘Stiletto Heel’ by sculptor Kalliopi Lemos. Also a temporary installation). The heel is shaped as a highly reflective stiletto dagger. I decide to make it the foreground feature for my drawing and I open my sketchbook, trying to imagine the giant owner striding over the buildings to reclaim her shoe

This was originally laid out as a private garden with grass and gravel paths for the residents of the square. The central statue by Jan Van Nost was installed in 1753. The park information sign says that it’s of Charles II, but other sources claim it as George II. I think George wins, as he was on the throne at the time (and anyway, Charles is well represented around here; there’s a statue of him only a few streets away in Soho Square Gardens which I visited for Sticks in the Smoke 19 back in June). Allegedly this statue was presented to the square by a benefactor who accidentally bid for it at auction!

By the start of the 1800s, the residential character of the square had changed. Original 17th century family homes were split into lodging houses, many occupied by foreign workers, from the district’s theatres and music halls. Charles Dickens, in Nicholas Nickleby (1839), wrote of Golden Square:

“.. Its boarding houses are musical, and the notes of pianos and harps float in the evening time round the head of the mournful statue, the guardian genius of a little wilderness of shrubs, in the centre of the square. On a summer’s night, windows are thrown open, and groups of swarthy moustached men are seen by the passerby, lounging at the casements, and smoking fearfully. Sounds of gruff voices practising vocal music invade the evening’s silence; and the fumes of choice tobacco scent the air. There, snuff and cigars, and German pipes and flutes, and violins and violoncellos, divide the supremacy between them. It is the region of song and smoke. Street bands are on their mettle in Golden Square; and itinerant glee singers quaver involuntarily as they raise their voices within its boundaries..”

A large group of about 20 tourists press together for a photo in front of the statue. They arrange themselves in rows like a sports team. Some of them fling out their arms to copy George’s gesture.

During the rest of the 19th century, many original houses were demolished to make way for warehouses and office blocks in a chaotic and unrelating mix of architectural styles, many of which still stand today. Golden Square developed as the centre in London of the woollen and worsted trade, partly due to its proximity to the largest concentration of tailors in London. By 1900 there were seventy textile companies in the square.

Under the surrounding looming buildings, and with its mature plane trees blocking light, the garden became a shady and dismal space. During the second world war an air raid shelter was dug under the garden, the enclosing iron railings removed to provide metal for the war effort and the space was used as a dumping ground for bombed debris. In the 1950s it was taken over by Westminster City Council and completely refurbished to more or less the current design. The plane trees were felled, light was allowed back in and the hornbeams planted. The gardens were renovated again in 1984 with new shrubs and flower displays.

Light is fading fast, the late afternoon chill descending. I try to work more quickly. Colours seem to change dramatically every moment I look up from my sketchbook. A pink glow spreads through the sky and the streetlights have turned on. People scurry. The sound of many wings clapping, pigeons hurrying to roost.

As I pack up, a booming, out of tune singing starts up and echoes around the square: a busker sitting on his coat on the steps is belting out ‘Why, why, why, Delilah?‘ using a large traffic cone as very effective megaphone!

Golden Square, Soho, London. W1R 3AD
Google earth view here

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Sticks in the Smoke 39: Deans Yard, Westminster Abbey

Tranquility and Sanctuary and keeping off the grass. (Wednesday 16 November 2016)

Away from the tumult around Parliament Square and the Westminster tourist hubbub and forests of selfie sticks, push past packs of tour groups flocking The Sanctuary, then through the Deans Yard arch and gatehouse. Phew! Step back in time into this tranquil collegiate acre of lawn and mature trees. I slowly walk the lane around this ancient square, past a mixed collection of dignified buildings, dating from Tudor to Georgian, Victorian and prewar, pressed together like a well- thumbed collection of leather bound volumes around the walls of a hushed library. The north and east side are some of the oldest. They house abbey offices and parts of Westminster School. On the south is the majestic Church House, which is the headquarters of the Church of England. And the buildings on west side contain Westminster Abbey Choir School (founded in 1560, and still educating the 35 or so choirboys, aged 8 – 13, who sing in the Abbey). I walk under its oriel windows and the lilting and piping notes of flute and piccolo spill from an upstairs music classroom; a calming counter to the hoots and toots of relentless traffic beyond this square. There are 10 original Victorian iron lamp standards at intervals around the square. I try to imagine their weak greenish gas glow filtering through the thick smogs of 100 years ago.

The land that is now Westminster was once a teardrop shaped island of about 660 acres, called Thorn Ey (later Thorney Island), where branches of the River Tyburn (now underground in conduits and sewers) flowed into the Thames. Wild, inhospitable and overgrown (hence ‘Thorney’). A small Benedictine monastery was founded here in the early 900s. The land was laboriously tamed and cleared by the monks so that it became one of the most fertile and productive pieces of land in London, with fields, orchards and gardens. Deans Yard is roughly where the monastery farmyard was shaded by an elm tree grove (which gave this part of the monastery it’s popular name ‘The Elms’). In the 11th century Edward the Confessor built the original Westminster Abbey on adjacent land and his Palace of Westminster close by. Two hundred years later, Henry III rebuilt most of the abbey in the new, elegant Gothic style, housing a shrine to the canonised Edward the Confessor. Over the centuries, many additions and changes were made; the twin western towers being finally completed in 1745.

I pause at the far end in the shade of Church House and look back across the lawn; swathes and scatters of leaves garnish the mowed stripes. There, rising above, are the magnificent towers. The Portland stone ethereal and gilded in the sunlight. Almost vanishing behind the canopies of plane and chestnut: hanging veils of crumpled gold. A birch tree is a slender, sinewy, pale blue pillar. A plump crow picks the ground around its base, hunting worms. I put my rucksack down on the kerb edge of the lawn (a nearby sign reads ‘PLEASE KEEP OFF THE GRASS’), and set up my easel. Uniformed Westminster School students walk between lessons. They traditionally refer to this space as ‘Green’. I overhear odd snippets of teenage conversation: “…go on, just put your tongue behind it and pull!..” and “..hmm, not a bad film, I rate it approximately 6.75 out of 10…”. A couple of hurrying boys take a shortcut across the grass.

Westminster school is one of the UK’s most esteemed public schools but has its origins as a small charity school provided by the abbey’s Benedictine monks in the 12th century. Following the Dissolution of the monasteries in the 1540s, the school was allowed to continue. Today there are about 750 pupils from age 7 to 18 (mostly boys, although girls are admitted into the 6th form at 16). Traditionally they have the right to play football on Green.

Until the 17th century, pupils at the school had to share this space with a changing community of dangerous criminals and villains, who took advantage of ‘ecclesiastical sanctuary‘, which traditionally offered immunity from arrest within the abbey precincts. The area in front of the abbey is still called The Sanctuary, but I wouldn’t advise running here after robbing a bank and hoping you’ll be safe, you’re 400 years too late!

Today’s shifting sunlight dramatically changes the mood of the abbey towers; one moment they seem to dissolve into luminescence; then a shadow passes over. Bringing weight and solemnity.

Behind me, a burst of sudden laughter and the sound of shoes clacking on the raised paved terrace of Church House and down the steps. Some pause to look at my drawing and one tells me she can’t even draw a straight line. I say I can’t either. They’re delegates taking a break from a local government conference being held today. Church House was originally built in 1887 to celebrate Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee and intended as a central meeting and administrative building for the Church of England. It was redesigned by architect, Sir Herbert Baker to provide more space and was completed in 1940. Only a year later it took a direct hit during the Blitz, but suffered very little damage. For this reason it was requisitioned to serve as a more secure, wartime Houses of Parliament. After the war, in January 1946, the newly created United Nations Security Council met for the first time in this building. Today it houses various departments of the Church of England, and hosts the annual General Synod meetings. It is also a prestigious venue for all kinds of events, from conferences to weddings.

I close my sketchbook and pack it away. Muffled piano notes float down from the music room window. A leaf lazily twists and gently drifts to earth, exactly in line with the birch tree trunk.

(There are three other original gardens within Westminster Abbey which are free to enter: the Garth, the Little Cloister and College Garden. I’m hoping to return to draw them in early spring.)

Deans Yard, Westminster Abbey, London. SW1P 3NZ
Opening times: 10-4 on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Free entry
Google earth view here

Sticks in the Smoke 38: Grosvenor Square Gardens, Mayfair

“As I was walkin’ ’round Grosvenor Square. Not a chill to the winter but a nip to the air..” (Thursday 10 November 2016)*

The Ronald Reagan statue gleams at me as I cross the road on the southwest corner of the square. I walk past the modernist US Embassy building (designed by Eero Saarinen and completed in 1960. Although I think it’s been used as a model for countless multi storey car parks since it was built!). A powerful statement in an otherwise predominantly Georgian and neo- Georgian part of London, spanning the whole west

width of Grosvenor Square. Its great gilded eagle, spreading wings on the roof, ready to soar over the luxury hotels and other embassies standing around these 6 acres. Debris and crumpled placards from last night’s protests against Donald Trump’s election lie discarded amongst the fallen leaves.

There’s been an American presence in Grosvenor Square since the 18th Century, when John Adams became the first American ambassador to Britain and, from 1785 -88, lived in a house on the north east corner of the square (ten years later he was elected the second president of the United States). The US Embassy and other departments have been here since the 1930s (Eisenhower had his HQ here during World War 2, when the Square was popularly known as ‘Little America’). In 1968 there were large anti war protests against American involvement in the Vietnam War and, over the years, this square has been the focus for the venting of feelings about American international policy. Security has become a huge issue since 9/11 and the road in front of the US embassy was closed permanently to traffic in 2001, and defensive barriers put in place. However, partly because of continuing security concerns, and partly out of a need for a 21st Century upgrade, USA is now building a new high security embassy across the Thames, sitting close to the old Battersea Power Station. An energy efficient glass cube, due for completion in 2017.

Sunshine as I enter the park (and definitely a nip to the air!), speckled shadows over golden orange leaf litter under a grove of plane trees. This is a broad and airy space, which feels like a piece of ancient land. Which indeed it is; just like Berkeley Square, down the road (see Sticks in the Smoke 13), this was a piece of original pasture retained within a fine square of elegant houses when Mayfair was first being developed by the Grosvenor family in the early 1700s. It was laid out as a private garden to serve the residents of the square. Oval in shape, enclosed by railings, with hedges and elm trees. Formal gravel and grass

paths and a pattern of shrubberies around a central statue of George 1 in a commanding position on his horse. It was redesigned in the 19th century, made less formal and with tennis courts and children’s swings, and the elms were replaced with plane trees, which could better cope with acid fallout from the smoke of the city’s hundreds of thousands of coal fires. George 1st’s statue had fallen into disrepair so was removed.

Heavy slate purple clouds are building from the west. Rain was forecast. I take the perimeter path, past the tall Eagle Squadrons Memorial, erected in 1985 at the southern end of the main paved axis of the gardens. The bronze eagle sculpted in 1985 by Dame Elisabeth Frink sits on its peak, silhouetted against the darkening sky. It commemorates the 244 Americans and the 16 British fighter pilots who served in the three Royal Air Force Eagle Squadrons before the US officially joined the 2nd world war.

On to the far end, where the September 11th 2001 garden faces the American embassy across the lawns. A semicircle of colourful and textural planting, symbolic of love,

friendship and remembrance, including lilies, rosemary, ivy, lavender and roses. A wide green oak pergola, inscribed with the words ‘Grief is the price we pay for love’, houses memorial plaques for the 67 UK citizens who lost their lives in the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon on that awful day. An anonymous sleeping bundle is swaddled in a blanket on a bench under the pergola.

There’s the smell of approaching rain, so I walk across the lawn and make a speedy start on drawing the view towards the Stars and Stripes on the US embassy flagpole, twisting and furling through bare oak twigs (see image at top). Many well dressed people stride past, talking earnestly, with a serious and important air. A jaunt of smart suited men with scarves talking Italian (the Italian embassy is behind me on the east flank of the square). Two high vis clad workmen stop to watch me draw. They’re taking a break from conservation work on one of the older houses in the square. Replacing cornices. One comments that drawing must be such a relaxing thing to do. I reply “Hmm, yes, it is sometimes!”, while consciously trying to unfurrow my brow and loosen the tight grip on my pen.

The inevitable downpour arrives and I quickly gather my things together and beat a retreat under a tree. For a while it’s torrential. I stand under my umbrella for half an hour,

watching figures scurrying by under their brollies, fragmented reflections in the paving. Trees and buildings fade in the rainy haze. My shoes are soaked.

After the second World War, as the perimeter iron railings had been removed to support the war effort, it proved impractical to keep people out of these private gardens. And with so much surrounding devastation, access to green space was more important than ever. So it was decided to officially open Grosvenor Square Gardens to everyone. The garden was redesigned by architect B. W. L. Gallannaugh, with peripheral holly hedge, Portland stone axis path, pools, fountains and a bronze statue of Franklin D Roosevelt, sculpted by Sir William Reid Dick, high up on a stone pedestal (this intended as a commemoration to American support and sacrifice during the War and the relationship between US and the UK. It was entirely funded by the British public). He stands tall and stately with cape and stick, above a seating area, flower beds and yew hedges. And pleached limes behind him.

The rain eases and the sky begins to clear and I squelch across to look at the statue of Roosevelt, reflecting down into wet paving. A lone bouquet of white hydrangeas has been placed on his steps. The note reads: “THERE WAS NEVER A DEMOCRACY YET THAT DID NOT COMMIT SUICIDE” –JOHN ADAMS. As I draw the statue (see image below), set behind a bed of fading shrubs, those words bounce around my mind. And I think of last night’s protests and the discarded placards. And I think about the memorials here to the consequences of inhumanity. And humanity. The sky is now clear and pinky blue; the sun has dropped below rooflines. A crane alone is catching the light and glows a silver gold. My shoes are cold and damp and I stamp my feet. A nanny, pushing a pram that’s almost as tall as she is, stops and watches me drawing and we talk. She tells me she loves to paint flowers and won the art prize when at school in the Philippines. I look in at the baby and wave my fingers at her and say “helloo there!” She just stares out at me with the brightest, steadiest, most intense eyes. Full of promise.

(In his ‘Sticks in the Smoke’ project, Nick Andrew is visiting, researching and drawing a different public park or garden in Central London each week of 2016, leading to a collection of paintings exploring the theme of city green spaces from the perspective of a rural landscape painter. These will be shown in an exhibition in London in 2017. www.nickandrew.co.uk )

Grosvenor Square, Mayfair, London. SW1W 0AU
Google earth view here

*From ‘Scarlet Begonias’ by The Grateful Dead

Sticks in the Smoke 37: St Anne & St Agnes Garden/ St John Zachary (The Goldsmiths) Garden, Gresham Street

Concerto for clanking scaffolding and saxophone (Wednesday 3 November 2016)

Back in the heat of August, while wandering this area after drawing St Mary Aldermanbury; St Mary Staining and St Olave Silver Street for Sticks in the Smoke 27, I came across this little pair of sainted green spaces, just a street’s width apart, also created in the footprints of churchyards devastated by the Great Fire in 1666. Extraordinary to imagine that 400 years ago, these 5 churches all stood so close to each other within an area of only about 200 x 200 metres. But I guess, in these heavily populated city streets and alleys, there would need to be enough pew space, when most people, devout or not, attended church. The chorus of ringing must have been deafening on Sunday mornings. (The bells of St Anne and St Agnes church are immortalised in a verse in the traditional nursery rhyme ‘Oranges and Lemons‘: “..Kettles and pans, Say the bells at St. Annes..”)

So I return today and, as I approach the junction of Noble and Gresham Streets, trees seem to be leaning out and shaking their autumn foliage at the glass and steel of the surrounding blocks, flinging showers of leaves with every shake. Many scarfed and wrapped office workers rush by quickly to escape this easterly breeze, chill as a blade.

This area was on the northwest edge of Roman Londinium. A fort was built here in AD120 to house the official guard (over 1000 men) of the Governor of Britain. Wartime bombing uncovered sections of its foundations, including a square sentry turret. From the edge of St Anne and St Agnes you can look down over a wall at the excavations and can clearly see the stone square foot of this turret and stretches of wall, topped with layers of masonry and brickwork from medieval to Victorian. These two churches were built before the 12th century, just outside the site of the fort.

St Anne and St Agnes Garden
Around the corner a scaffolding lorry is being unloaded. Temporary barriers have closed off the gardens! Steel poles and planks are encasing the church in preparation for essential restoration work; hammers clang and ring as the structure builds towards the roof. I ask one of the scaffolders if I can stand just inside their temporary barriers to do my drawing and he shrugs his permission.

In earliest Norman records the church that stood here was confusingly referred to either as St Agnes or ‘St Anne in the Willows’s. By the 15th century, these names had been brought together in its double dedication. As with the neighbouring churches, mentioned above, this was also engulfed and destroyed by the Great Fire. Only the lower section of its tower stood above the charred rubble. But within 20 years, this had been incorporated into a new and elegant brick church, designed by Wren, based on a Greek cross plan. It was severely damaged again in an air raid in 1940. Postwar reconstruction was funded by the Lutheran church, and reopened in 1966 for use by London’s Estonian and Latvian communities. Since 2013 it’s taken on a new identity, as the Gresham Centre: the exciting home of the musical educational charity, VCM Foundation, inspiring and engaging young people through song and sound.

These third of an acre gardens were laid out on the old churchyard in the 1970s, a variety of trees planted, including maple, lime and catalpa, plane, ash and cherry. They wrap an L shape around the south and east of the church, sections of which are shrouded behind tangled and mingled branches and twigs of autumnal and evergreen foliage. I draw the complex leafy lacework in front of scaffolded walls (see drawing at top). At the southern end a rowan is a gold yellow flame, the most intense hue in view. People stream in and out of Lloyds Bank Head Office, just up the steps. Some stop to smoke, leaning on the wall overlooking the ruins. One of the scaffolders comes over to have a look at my drawing. He shouts up to his mate: “ere Kirk! e’s drawn a picture of you up there!….. Not very flattering!” In fact I haven’t drawn Kirk. He wouldn’t keep still long enough!

St John Zachary Garden (The Goldsmith’s Garden)

On the opposite side of Noble Street, St John Zachary Garden is shaded by two massive plane trees, which compete in height with the sheer steel and glass Lloyds bank building

which looms like a cliff over the garden. Walk under an ironwork arch with golden leopard’s heads on either side and at the apex. This garden is on two levels. Past beds of evergreen shrubs and exotic plants, some late lillies still in ragged flower, and up five wide steps into a small paved and gravelled garden, with ancient gravestones laid. Here the gnarly plane tree trunks. Simple benches sit amongst ferns and spreading shrubs and low, feathery trees around the edge. There’s no-one here but I’m on the same level as the ground floor of the adjacent Lloyds building, and have a commanding view of multifarious and hectic office activity through the grid of windows. This is on the site of the churchyard of St John Zachary (aka John the Baptist), which dates from before the 12th century. It too was heavily damaged in the Great Fire, after which it remained as ruins until pulled down in the 1800s.

A flourishing fig tree overhangs as I take the steps down to the sunken level. More golden leopard masks on guard, fixed to the walls. The Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths have owned land hereabouts, dating from 1339. After the buildings here were destroyed in the war, this little garden (less than quarter of an acre) was laid out in 1941 by firewatchers (in 1950, it won the Best Garden on a Blitzed Site) The lower garden is the site where the earliest

recorded Livery Hall was built. In 1300 Edward I decreed that quality of gold and silver should be standardised across the country, assayed by the Goldsmith’s Company and marked with the leopard’s head- the first ever hallmark. Today, assaying is carried out in the current Goldsmiths Hall, a solid Victorian edifice which sternly overlooks these gardens from the other side of Gresham Street.

Down here, a simple path around the edge, a square, well tended lawn with pedestal fountain in the centre, a few small trees and shrubs around the edge and climbers up the brickwork. In the far corner, a sculpture by Wilfred Dudeney of three printers, showing the whole newspaper process from editor to printer to newsboy (originally commissioned in 1957 for New Street Square, but moved here when it was being redeveloped). I look for a suitable spot to draw and set up on the lower path close to the Lloyds building, where warm air is wafting from a heating vent. A laurel in the foreground and a red- leaved Japanese Maple (I think) spreads out from the upper

beds (see drawing above) Not many people in the garden; a businessman with his coat collar pulled up, gripping a steaming cup and murmuring into his phone. A young couple come down the steps hand in hand and sit on a bench in the view I’m drawing, hold each other closely and kiss. I look up from my sketchbook and we accidentally make eye contact a few times. A bit awkward.

Calls of crows echo loudly between the buildings: the song of the fast approaching autumnal gloam. And, to add to the effect, for a few minutes there’s the halting howl of a saxophone from the direction of St Anne and St Agnes Gardens.

St Anne & St Agnes, Gresham Street, London. EC1A 4ER
St John Zachary (The Goldsmiths Garden), Gresham Street, London. EC2V 7HN
Google earth view here

Sticks in the Smoke 36: Hyde Park 2

Ladybird shower and “The Right to Speak” (Wednesday 26 October 2016)

I pick up a coffee at the Serpentine Cafe. This is where I left off my last visit to Hyde Park in March, when I explored the east and south of the park (see Sticks in the Smoke 10, where you can read about Hyde Park’s hunting park origins). I can’t believe that it’s 7 months since my daughter Millie and I were here. Huddled and trying to keep warm with hot chocolates as I made my drawing across the lake. Today there’s sunshine and still a fragile warmth which belies the fast approaching end of October. As much as I can, I’m planning to roam the west and north of the Park today. I wander along and across the park road. Cyclists and joggers dodging geese along the lakeside. A stand of limes are flaming gold beacons on the leaf strewn grass. Their branches gently reaching to the ground, brushing the already fallen litter, forming pointillist speckled circular mats of ochre and yellow around their bases. I walk around and through this little grove and find a view to

draw between the trees, towards a shimmer of the Serpentine and the jagged Edwardian roofline of the Hyde Park Hotel (now the Manadrin Oriental. Originally opened in 1899 as an exclusive gentleman’s club).

As I draw a squirrel keeps jumping out of the closest tree and hops in circles, flicking its tail aggressively, with quivery shakes. I think it owns the tree and resents my presence. Then I feel something small and hard land on my head. I brush it off and it lands on my sketchbook- a ladybird! Then I see a couple on my sleeve. And another lands on the back of my neck. And they keep arriving like mini helicopters! Looking up, the air above me is freckled with flying dots. They’re everywhere! On the move to find hibernation quarters. I just don’t think my shirt pocket is the best place for them to see through the winter!

Many people are in the park: picnic groups, half term families on London day trips, a kid’s sports club is taking place nearby: excited yelling and enthusiastic cries. From behind me, the sound of construction: drilling and hammering – a long wall of hoardings conceals the site for Hyde Park Winter Wonderland. Coming soon: skating rink, funfair and Christmas Market! This its 10th year, due to open in mid November. Hyde Park has a history of hosting big events, from The Great Exhibition of 1851 (housed in Joseph Paxton‘s extraordinary Crystal Palace, which would have been visible from here, just on the other side of the Serpentine, sunshine sparkling from its glass roofs), to events in the 2012 Olympics (triathlon and marathon swimming in the Serpentine), to big concerts such as British Summer Time, which this July, hosted Carole King‘s first concert in London for nearly 30 years, where she performed the whole of her 1971 album ‘Tapestry‘ live for the first time.

Drawing finished, I follow the path behind me, alongside the hoardings. It leads up towards the Reformer’s Tree mosaic, a rounded mound with image of an oak tree, created from black pebbles on a white pebbled background. It was designed by Harry Gray and Roz Flint of Colvin and Moggridge Landscape Architects and was unveiled in 2000 by Tony Benn. The inscription engraved in the surrounding sandstone circle describes its significance: “THIS MOSAIC HAS BEEN DESIGNED TO COMMEMORATE THE ‘REFORMERS TREE’, A VENERABLE TREE WHICH WAS BURNT DOWN DURING THE REFORM LEAGUE RIOTS IN 1866. THE REMAINING STUMP BECAME A NOTICEBOARD FOR THE POLITICAL DEMONSTRATION AND A GATHERING POINT FOR REFORM LEAGUE MEETINGS. A NEW OAK TREE WAS PLANTED BY THE THEN PRIME MINISTER JAMES CALLAGHAN ON 7 NOVEMBER 1977 ON THE SPOT WHERE ‘REFORMERS TREE’ WAS THOUGHT TO HAVE STOOD”

This feels like the hub of Hyde Park. A landmark; runners and cyclists use it as a pivotal point on their routes. Two children stand on top of the mosaic and thrust their arms out like tree branches for their Dad’s photo. From this point, 9 footpaths lead off, straight as spokes to all parts of the park. I take the path out to the west. As I walk the sun streams through autumnal foliage. Big cutout leaves of a red oak are ablaze against a maple’s lucent yellow. The path leads me past the Old Police House, which is now the HQ of The Royal Parks.

I carry on and arrive at the Hudson Bird Sanctuary Memorial, a relief sculpture by Jacob Epstein, of Rima, the jungle girl from William Hudson‘s novel, Green Mansions, spreading her arms as wings. It commemorates W H Hudson as 19th century naturalist and campaigner for wild areas in parks to attract and protect birds. This part of the park is still a refuge for birds such as robins, wrens, goldcrests and mistle thrushes, although all I see today are a couple of magpies drinking from the long rectangular pond. This is the second week in a row that I’ve encountered an Epstein (see ‘Sticks in the Smoke’35 Roper’s Gardens). This more highly finished, but still the strong, broad and primal forms.

Behind here is the site of the Hyde Park nurseries. Currently being demolished for reconstruction as a £5million ‘super nursery’ to be opened in 2017, where flowers, shrubs and trees will be grown to supply all the Royal Parks. As I walk its perimeter, I glimpse through the bushes and trees at a scene of rubble, dust and JCBs. And then wander back towards the east along the latticework of paths which carve the north part of Hyde Park into little untamed pastoral pieces: many many trees in stunning shades of gold and

russet and cherry violet. I join the North Carriage Drive and march on to Speakers Corner.

Following the Reform League riots of 1866 and further protests in 1867, campaigners agitated for the “right to speak” in Hyde Park. The government saw this as a way of ‘relieving the pressure’ and avoiding further confrontation. So the Parks Regulation Act was passed in 1872, which allowed public speaking in the northeast half of the park. Although, since then, this paved area, where Hyde Park meets the heaving confluence of Park Lane with Edgware Road and Bayswater Road, has been the traditional point for soapbox speakers, and Sunday the traditional day. Anyone can turn up and hold forth on almost any subject, but they need the guts and staying power to contend with hecklers and arguments from the crowd! Speakers Corner is a powerful symbol of freedom of speech in the UK. A recent court ruling stated that freedom of speech should not be limited to the inoffensive but extended also to “the irritating, the contentious, the eccentric, the heretical, the unwelcome, and the provocative, as long as such speech did not provoke violence.”

I draw a view across to Marble Arch and the white stone Art Deco facade of the Cumberland Hotel, rising behind. It’s a lively corner, a continual back and forth circus of joggers, cyclists, dog walkers, skaters, ice cream licking meanderers. A crossblader speeds by, propelling himself with ski sticks. No speakers here today, but lots of talkers, wanting to see and ask about my drawing. A little girl points to my scribble of tree branches and says she likes the ‘spider’s web’. A smiling man pushing a bike, goes up to everyone he passes and says “Jesus London!”. He wheels over and looks at me and then down at my drawing and hesitates. But then says “Jesus London!” enthusiastically. I’m not entirely sure what he’s getting at, but that’s ok; if you can’t say what you want here, where can you?

Hyde Park, London W2 2UH
Google earth view here

Sticks in the Smoke 35: Ropers Garden, Chelsea

Thomas More’s Head and Epstein’s Plinth (Wednesday 19 October 2016)

Walk here from the east along the Chelsea Embankment and, as you pass Chelsea Old Church, there’s a painted statue of Sir Thomas More (by Leslie Cubitt Bevis ), erected in 1969, with gold hands clasped tightly in prayer, sitting up on a plinth in a little semicircular garden (if you look on Google Street View, his face has been blurred out, which seems macabrely appropriate considering his fate!). Revered scholar and statesman, Thomas More settled in Chelsea in 1520, where he built a grand home: Beaufort House, just round the corner. (Chelsea was a popular rural location for the wealthy to build their large houses, conveniently close to the city, but far enough away from the stink! It was once described as “a village of palaces”). He had a close association with the Old Church and built his own chapel there.

The orchards, meadows and formal gardens of his estate rolled up from this stretch of riverbank where his official barge was moored (In the 16th century travel by river was much more reliable than the rough and rutted roads; Sir Thomas could get to Westminster or Hampton Court on state business with relative ease). More was living here with his family until he was arrested for treason for refusing to swear allegiance to Henry VIII as head of the English Church. He was executed at the Tower in 1535. Beaufort House remained standing for a further 200 years, but now only few fragments of orchard wall remain in private gardens nearby.

I cross Old Church Street and take the steps down into this sunken rectangle of a third of an acre. The roar of embankment traffic dulls as I descend. I catch the scent of tidal water. Lined with characterless 1960s brickwork, two kerb edged lawns and a raised seating area with naked timber pergola (office staff and workmen lunching and smoking: a stage with ever changing progression of actors). Ivy and climbers trail down from beds at the top of the walls. A simple, well- used space with benches and lawns worn and earthy, but is lifted out of its functionality by the captivating bronze nude: ‘The Awakening’ by Gilbert Ledward (1888-1960), which stands on a square column at the centre and, arms reaching high, dominates the garden. I walk around to get the best view- through tree branches, silhouetted against the river sky or looking down from the embankment wall. I choose to draw her (see drawing above) framed by the straight lines of the apartment block behind and the tall medieval windows of Crosby Hall (this is the surviving part of one of the mansions of Richard III, originally built in 1466 in Bishopsgate. When threatened with demolition in 1910, it was carefully dismantled and rebuilt on this spot, with neo-Tudor brick and stone additions added more recently and made into a private mansion).

My easel is perched on the edge of the eastern lawn. There’s a litter of black nut husks from a walnut tree at one end. At the other corner is a dark barked cherry tree, planted to commemorate Gunji Koizumi, father of British Judo, who died in 1965. A magpie strides around the grass, chakking proprietorially. Above, patches of hazy blue sky between the clouds. Cries of soaring seagulls are interrupted by the rumble of aircraft, following a northwest flight path. The noise is somehow amplified as it rolls around the brick walls. The woody donk of walnuts dropping onto flagstones.

A sudden glint of light catches my eye as a woman slides open an upper door in the apartment block. She yawns, then leans over the balcony and shakes three rag dolls over the side. One after the other. Then aggressively whacks them on the rail. Then she returns with some small rugs and does the same with those.

Ropers Garden is on the site of riverside orchards which were part of the wedding gift from Sir Thomas More to his daughter Margaret on her marriage to lawyer, William Roper in 1521. Margaret Roper was one of the most learned women of the age: writer, translator and poet. After her father was beheaded, she managed to rescue his head from its spike on London Bridge and is said to have pickled and preserved it in a barrel of spices, until her own death in 1544 at the age of 39.

I move my drawing things to the courtyard area at the eastern end of the garden. This is the site of a warehouse building which was one of Jacob Epstein’s earliest sculpture studios before the 1st World War. I start to draw the standing stone relief by Epstein (see drawing below) which stands here on a circular plinth (unveiled in 1972): ‘Woman Taking Off Her Dress’, an unfinished piece in white stone, but fabulously full of energetic evidence of chiselled scores and notches. Arms grappling above the head, crudely echo the reaching arms of the Ledward bronze. Behind is a magnolia tree, its curving branches spread out above four rose beds, which have seen their best and are now little more than twisted sticks. And there, I can see, just above the wall, Thomas More in his garden next door.

035d A woman leans over the wall and calls “the plinth!” I look up and realise she’s talking to me. I say “sorry?” And she nods at the relief, “the best part of that thing is the plinth!” and walks off disdainfully. I get the feeling that the Epstein’s not very popular with the locals!

The buildings here were destroyed by a parachute mine on 17 April 1941 during the Blitz. On the same night much of Chelsea Old Church next door was reduced to rubble, apart from a section which included the Thomas More Chapel. Following the war it was painstakingly rebuilt and was reconsecrated in 1958. This garden was excavated out of the bomb site, designed, laid out, and opened in 1964, dedicated to Margaret Roper.

A taxi driver has parked his cab and is smoking on the steps. He blows a last cloud and wanders over to look at my drawing and we talk about art for a minute or two. He narrows his eyes at the Epstein and says “Not really my cup of tea, mate. Reckon the best bit is…the plinth!”

Ropers Garden, Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, London. SW3 5AZ
Google earth view here

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