Welcome

The Society formed in 1985, saving from demolition, London's first public library in Great Smith Street
(above right).

We respond on behalf of residents and businesses to local planning applications.  Our 350+ members
enjoy local visits & talks of historic and other interest, social events and an archive of books, prints, plans
and ephemera.

Our PRIVACY POLICY can be viewed HERE

 

 

 

JOIN HERE

Please download the form below which can be completed, saved and returned to us as an email attachment to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Alternatively, print, complete and post to us at:  The Thorney Island Society, 10 Old Pye Street, London SW1P 2DG

MEMBERSHIP FORM

 

 

The Victoria Tower Gardens & The National Holocaust Memorial

The second and final public consultation and exhibition are underway! at Church House, 27 Great Smith Street.  From Wednesday 5th - Friday 7th December from 12 noon to 7pm, and Saturday 8th December from 10am to 4pm.  Further information can be found on the Save Victoria Tower Gardens Website www.savevictoriatowergardens.co.uk and on www.londonsociety.org.uk

As Sir Peter Bottomley said at the Society’s AGM on the 13th November, Victoria Tower Gardens was not initially regarded as suitable for inclusion on the Holocaust Commission shortlist. Suddenly it appeared as the preferred site resulting in the loss of public/green space in the only London park alongside the Thames and adjacent to a World Heritage Site. It will overshadow the Buxton Memorial Fountain which commemorates the emancipation of slaves in the British Empire in 1834 and its proximity to the excellent dedicated Holocaust Galleries at the Imperial War Memorial less than a mile away is bizarre.

Please go along to the exhibition, register your comments and please copy us in to your objections.

Click here to view the EXHIBITION BOARDS

 

The threat to the gardens from the Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre still remains. It is clearly very important that once the planning application is made, thought to be before the end of the year, that a large number of people write in to object to this scheme which will drastically alter the gardens and would be so much more effective if combined with the galleries at the IWM.


WE STRONGLY SUPPORT THE SAVE VICTORIA TOWER GARDENS CAMPAIGN.  See their website:

 

https://www.savevictoriatowergardens.co.uk/

 

Visits & Events 2018

Our events and visits are open to all unless specified and we hope non-members will enjoy our programme and consider joining the Society.  To book events and read further details, please go to our Eventbrite page   CLICK HERE.

If you do not wish to book online, please contact us and we will be happy to make your booking.

Our 2019 Programme of Events, Visits, Walks & Talks will be announced in the Spring.

ONGOING !  The Duck Island/Thorney Island Society Project, St James's Park     This exciting new collaboration with the park is calling for volunteers from TTIS to help restore and revitalise Duck Island. If you are interested in helping clear brambles and paths, raking and tidying the meadow area and lake edges, making log and deadwood piles, sorting and documenting artefacts in the barn or helping in the cottage garden, please get in touch to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or post us a note to TTIS, 10 Old Pye Street, SW1P 2DG
   

Tuesday 11th December, 6.30pm

The Society's Christmas Party & Prize Draw Raffle

Grange Rochester Hotel, 69 Vincent Square, SW1P 2PA (entrance in Vane Street) £14pp.  With the generous support of Grange Hotels.



Autumn-Winter 2018 Newsletter

 CLICK IMAGE BELOW TO VIEW:

 

AGM 2018

The Society's AGM was held on 13th November 2018 at the Grange Rochester Hotel.  The meeting was pleased to welcome Ptolemy Dean, architect of the new Weston Tower leading to the Queen's Jubilee Galleries and 19th Surveryor of the Fabric of Westminster Abbey, who gave an excellent talk with slides on the background, design and construction of the tower and explained some of the future plans and challenges facing the Abbey in order to improve the overall visitor experience, ticket hall, security check and storage areas.

Please click below to view:

Annual Report

 

 

Centenary of Armistice Cenotaph Service and Exhibition in St James's Park

Remembrance Day, 11th November, started at 11am with two minutes silence marked by the firing of guns from the King’s Troop on Horse Guards Parade followed by a service at the Cenotaph. TTIS Vice President, The Right Revd Dame Sarah Mullally, Bishop of London led the service of remembrance which was attended by the President of Germany for the first time. 

St James’s Park has made a special contribution this year by hosting the “Fields of Battle, Lands of Peace” exhibition with superb images of the sites of battlefields by photographer Michael St Maur Sheil. It demonstrates the “healing power” of the land and minds over the raw memory of war. The exhibition continues until 19th November.
 
 
 
 
 

Relocation of Emmeline Pankhurst statue from Victoria Tower Gardens

 

 

UPDATE!  The application for the removal of the statue of Emmeline Pankhurst from Victoria Tower Gardens was withdrawn following a very large number of objections and considerable press coverage.

This statue was commissioned by the women who worked with her and its position next to Parliament is symbolic of her significance in British history.  It is planned that after she is relocated to Regents University in Regents Park, a larger statue of her be placed in Canning Green, at the back of Parliament Square, but we are still not happy and do not want to lose this particular statue in its current position.  Read our objection letter on our Planning page and CLICK HERE to leave your own comment on WCC's website.

Relocation of Emmeline Pankhurst statue from Victoria Tower Gardens

 

Visit to The Queen's Jubilee Galleries, Westminster Abbey - September 2018


More than 30 members enjoyed a delightful visit to the new Queen’s Jubilee Galleries (or Triforium) in Westminster Abbey.  We have already reviewed the opening in June but this took nothing away from a remarkable experience. We were welcomed in the Chapter House by Tony Trowles, Head of the Abbey Collection.  He described the work of Ptolemy Dean Architect and exhibition designers MUMA that made the new external access tower and exhibition space possible.  He thanked the Society for their valuable contributions at design and planning stages in 2014.
 
The new spiral glass staircase did not disappoint with stunning close up views of the Chapter House windows, rows of gargoyles and beyond to the Houses of Parliament.  The materials and craftsmanship in the construction and finish was of the highest quality befitting the Abbey and shards of medieval stained glass, found by cleaners under the floor, had been incorporated into the new glass panes. Once in the Triforium the space is calm and gently lit behind huge carved leaded arch windows.  We walked on the wooden floor put in by Sir Christopher Wren who, we have recently learned, appointed a woman, Elizabeth Gregory to be head carpenter there to finish his work, circa 1700.
 
The views down onto the Abbey floor are magnificent and it is easy to imagine it as a popular viewing gallery at many coronations and funerals. 16 metres below, a perfect view of the normally inaccessible Henry V Chantry Chapel and Poets Corner.
 
The Galleries show over 300 objects belonging to the Abbey and collected over centuries.  Including, several carved wooden royal funeral effigies including of Henry VII and also Nelson, an early Roman sarcophagus (which had been re-used down the centuries), ancient illuminated books and documents including what was known as the Westminster Domesday Book of the 1300s which was compiled by the monks as a record of major grants and the travelling filing chest of Lady Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII, who inherited the vast House of Lancaster and was a very shrewd businesswoman who kept a very close eye on the management of the estates.
 
Our thanks to the Dean and Chapter for putting this special visit into place.  For those who missed it, you will have to pay £22 entrance fee to get into the Abbey and another £5 to visit the Galleries but armed with a (free) Westminster residents card and a secondary proof of identity such as a driving licence, you can get into the Abbey for free, then just pay £5 and also you do not have to queue !
 
Photographs with the kind permission of Westminster Abbey.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Thorney Tales (16) College Hall, Westminster Abbey / School

 

One of the least visited parts of Thorney Island is the College Hall of Westminster School. This is because during the day it is a full time dining room for the pupils and outside of term time it reverts to the Dean of Westminster as part of his dwelling. And not without reason because this used to be the medieval dining hall of former abbots of the Abbey. It is claimed to be “ the most perfect, indeed only almost complete mediaeval house existing in London“. It is not be confused with the much bigger - and less attractive - School Hall visited by TTIS members recently where, among other things, the annual pancake “Greaze’ takes place.

The structure of College Hall is largely unchanged from medieval times and the oak roof immediately recalls an Oxford or Cambridge college. The windows have been replaced but shards of the original 1376 stained glass can be seen at the arched top of two of the windows. There used to be an open fire in the middle of the hall through which junior Scholars were made to jump through as a rite of passage. You can still see the aperture in the roof through which the smoke would escape. 
 
The hall, which is not open to the public, is accessed from a private courtyard near the entrance to the cloisters and has been in continuous use since it was constructed by the free spending Abbot Litlyngton who also built the Jerusalem Chamber (where Henty lV died) in the early 1370s. 
Queen Elizabeth l visited the hall on several occasions to hear the annual Latin play which her own statutes for the school had laid down.
It was in this hall that another Elizabeth - Elizabeth Woodville, Edward IV’s Queen - twice claimed the ancient right of sanctuary when her life and that of her family were threatened. On the second occasion she was with her five daughters and second son, Richard, the Duke of York trying to escape the wrath of Richard lll when things turned nasty. See our earlier post https://tinyurl.com/y7spbo66
 
The right of sanctuary in the area immediately around the Abbey was so ingrained that even a ruthless king like Richard dare not abuse it. One of the celebrated people to take advantge of it was the poet John Skelton sometime tutor to the young Henry Vlll who composed sycophantic verses for royalty and noblemen. But he could also be acerbic and when he turned his satirical pen on the over-indulgent lifestye of his former patron Cardinal Wolsey it was a step too far. He sought refuge in the Sanctuary at Westminster to avoid being sent to prison by the Cardinal and spent the rest of his life there. 
 
The hall is believed to be the oldest regularly used dining room in London. Although it iis difficult to visit it, the outside wall is visible above the gift shop adjacent to the western entrance to the Abbey. The building peeping above the shop to the left is the Jerusalem Chamber and to the right is College Hall.
 
 
  1. Visit to The Church House - August 2018
  2. "The Devil's Acre before Peabody" Talk - August 2018
  3. Visits to Westminster School - July 2018
  4. Purcell Musical Tour of Westminster Abbey - June 2018