Postman’s Park

On a walk around the city of London a couple of years ago, I happened across this unexpected little hideaway near the city, known as Postman’s Park. Situated in what was once the churchyard of St Botolph-Without-Aldersgate, not far from St Paul’s, the park gets its name from its popularity as a lunchtime haunt for workers from the old General Post Office building in nearby Newgate Street. It is also home to a unique memorial – well worth a visit if you’re ever passing by… and guaranteed to have you sobbing into your sandwiches in no time!

 

The monument was the brainchild of the Victorian painter and sculptor G.F. Watts. A social radical who twice refused a baronetcy and made no attempt to disguise his contempt for the upper classes, Watts was a great believer in art as a force for social good. He first conceived the idea of a national memorial to “heroes of everyday life” in 1887 as a worthy way to mark Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee. The first site proposed for it was Hyde Park, but this was rejected in favour of a small green space which had been laid out in 1880 on the site of the former churchyard and burial ground of the church of St Botolph-Without-Aldersgate.

The monument was not finally dedicated until 1900. At the unveiling, a short service was held in St Botolph's, after which a speech was given by the Bishop of London in which he observed that: “It was a good thing that the multitude who took their recreation in this open space should have some great thoughts on which to fix their hearts, some inscriptions before their eyes recalling to them the things which had been done by those who did their duty bravely, simply and straightforwardly in the place where God had placed them. Such were, indeed, the salt of the earth, and it was by producing characters such as theirs that a nation waxed strong.” Watts, by now 83, was too ill to attend the ceremony and was represented by his wife.

The memorial takes the form of a 50ft-long wooden loggia built onto a wall, with seating below. It was initially planned to have the inscriptions engraved onto the wall, but then hand-painted,

ceramic wall tablets were chosen instead. Watts had it built with space for 120 tiles in five rowstoday two of those rows are still empty. The tiles in the middle row were made by the ceramicist William de Morgan, the top and bottom rows by the Royal Doulton factory in Lambeth.

The plaques commemorate acts of heroism carried out by ordinary Londoners – men, women and children – whose ages ranged from the eight year-old Henry Bristow to Daniel Pemberton, who met his end at sixty-one. Watts collected hundreds of newspaper cuttings of heroic acts, from which the most “astonishing” were chosen for the memorial. The people commemorated on the first thirteen plaques were chosen by Watts himself. After his death, his widow added a further forty – with floral decoration and blue lettering – and a small statuette of Watts in the centre.

So what makes Watts’ memorial unique? At a time when tributes were generally only paid to military heroes and statesmen, and with the advent of official citations for bravery still many years off, the memorial is a refreshing celebration of ordinary people doing extraordinary things. 

Despite the melodramatic tone of their language, the stories the tiles tell are moving. The earliest of the tablets commemorates Sarah Smith, “a Pantomime Artiste at Prince’s Theatre, who died of horrible injuries received when attempting in her inflammable dress to extinguish the flames which had enveloped her companion. January 24^th 1863.”

The plaques honouring children are particularly poignant. They include: “Solomon Galaman: Aged 11, died of injuries September 6, 1901 after saving his little brother from being run over in Commercial Street : ’Mother, I saved him but I could not save myself’”, “Alice Ayres: daughter of a bricklayer’s labourer, who by intrepid conduct saved three children from a burning house at the cost of her own young life” and “Harry Sisley of Kilburn, who was just ten when in 1878 he drowned trying to rescue his baby brother.”

After her husband’s death in 1904, Mary Watts lived for another 34 years, and was buried alongside her husband in Compton. Following her death, the memorial was abandoned half-finished, with only 52 of the intended 120 spaces filled.

In June, 2009, the first new plaque for over seventy years was unveiled in the park. However, it is unlikely that more will be added. The Friends of the Watts Memorial, who oversee its care, have made it clear they do not want the historical integrity of this unique memorial to be compromised by the addition of more tiles. The memorial is now Grade II listed.

St Botolph's remains open as a functioning church, but because of its location in a now mainly commercial area with few local residents, services are held (unusual in this country) on Tuesdays instead of the more traditional Sundays.

 References:

Tunnels, Towers & Temples: London’s 100 Strangest Places David Long (2007)
111 Places in London That You Shouldn’t Miss John Sykes (2016)
Website: http://www.wattsmemorial.org.uk/
Website: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postman's_Park