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Thorney Tales (11) - The Abbey Garden

It is a little known fact to most people that the oldest garden in the country is located at the back of Westminster Abbey and is open to the public several days a week. It is an oasis of tranquility at the heart of one of the busiest cities in the world.

The "Infirmarer's Garden" - as it is officially called - has been in continuous cultivation for 900 years. It was mainly used for growing medicinal herbs, food, fruit and even grape vines for the well-being of the monks. It is still enclosed on two sides by the original medieval wall and its contours are more or less as they were apart from a parcel of land at the north-east end (opposite the Houses of Parliament) that was expropriated by Edward III for his Jewel Tower.

Dig here and you are digging into the very earth which was Thorney Island, the eyot formed by the convergence of the Thames and the Tyburn on which the Abbey was originally built.

Among the delights of the garden are two mulberry trees and four fading sculptures by Arnold Quellin who was from the studio of the great Grinling Gibbons (1648 – 1721). They were part of an altarpiece made by Gibbons and Quellin for James II as a Catholic chapel for his wife in Whitehall Palace in 1685. The altar piece later became part of the high altar in the Abbey. The statues became surplus to requirements and were moved to the garden where they command an almost metaphysical presence. Two of them guard the back door to Westminster School and the other two the rear entrance to the garden in Great College Street.

The garden is open to the public for free several days a week (entrance from Dean's Yard). Here you can experience a rural solitude bang in the centre of London with the Houses of Parliament and the roof of the Abbey in sight. On your way out have a coffee in the Cellarium, an original medieval building, where the monks kept their wine in olden days.

WCC say "No" (AGAIN!) to proposed sculpture outside Westminster Central Hall

UPDATE - January 2017

We regret to report that the Appeal has been dismissed by WCC. Many of the arguments used by the Council to prevent this small sculpture from being placed at Central Hall (eg. within its Monuments Saturation Zone) would apply to the Holocaust Memorial but will they take the same view ? We suspect not.

Appeal Decision Document - 9th January 2017

UPDATE - April 2016

Westminster City Council have disappointly turned down this application. Read more here in a Guardian article.

To sign the on-line petition to overturn the decision, click here.

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We support this application for the installation of the sculpture 'Homeless Jesus' in front of the Methodist Hall on Storey's Gate.

The sculpture is very moving and is appropriate in this location, near where there is so much wealth and yet so many rough sleepers.

Westminster Fire Station

UPDATE: December 2016

The Society is sorry to have to report that planning permission has been granted for the redevelopment of this important heritage building.

Following a public exhibition in May, please see our response here or on the Planning page.

Vauxhall Bridge Road/Tachbrook St Draft Development Opportunity

November 2016

Out of our area, but important enough to comment on. The block that contains the Queen Mother Sports Centre is being considered as a 'Development Opportunity' by Westminster City Council. They produced a draft document which can be viewed at: https://openforum.westminster.gov.uk/development-op-framework-UVBR.

Our response can be viewed here and on the Planning page.

June Stubbs 1927 - 2016

It is with great sadness to the Society that June Stubbs passed away on Friday 14th October, suddenly after collapsing at her nursing home.

June was a co-founder of the Society and for over 25 years was its Chairman and driving force. From her flat in Westminster Mansions, Great Smith Street, she was in an excellent position to keep a close eye on Thorney Island, and never missed an opportunity to represent the Society in public. She presided over many meetings, Christmas bazaars, parties and dinners. She was honoured with the award of an MBE in 2011 for services to conservation in the City of Westminster. June moved several years ago to an excellent nursing home in the New Forest, close to her family and enjoyed her final years in comfort and rest.

To send condolences to June's family, please write to info@thethorneyislandsociety.org.uk, or by post to 10 Old Pye Street, SW1P 2DG and we will pass it on. The funeral was held on Thursday 17th November in Reigate, Surrey.

Visit to Tate Britain's Archives & Library, November 2016

With huge thanks to Derek Rice, Library & Archives Co-Ordinator for a fascinating visit behind the scenes.

We were shown around the archives and store room. Temperature controlled with tight security arrangements and flood protection in place. Large moveable storage shelves and cupboards house the many treasures. We were shown prints and documents relating to the Millbank Penitentiary on the present gallery site. Next we entered the library to see documents, books and computer displays about the Thames and its history, part of a special project that changes monthly called Show and Tell. Finally Derek took us to view the Nash exhibition. A fascinating visit.

One of the many in the collection, here is a photograph of the gallery at the time of the 1928 Thames Flood.

AGM 2016 & the Panorama of The Thames Project

Our AGM was held on 9th November 2016 at the Grange Rochester Hotel, Vincent Square. For further details and documents, please select the "Us" tab at the top of this page.

Following the business of the meeting, we were treated to a presentation and film of the project to restore Leigh's beautiful 1829 Panorama of the Thames and to create a current photographic panorama.

Highly recommended, please read further about this project.

http://www.panoramaofthethames.com

St Andrew's Club - 150th Anniversary, October 2016

The Thorney Island Society has just celebrated its 30th anniversary, so it was with a due sense of humility that we visited our next door neighbour, the Saint Andrew's club, on the occasion of the President's Reception to mark its 150th anniversary. St Andrew's is the oldest youth club in the world. It pretty well invented them at a time when the social effects of the industrial revolution made life very difficult for young people. This was especially true in the area of Old Pye Street - which had been dubbed "The Devil's Acre" by Charles Dickens - and to which the club eventually moved (much later) from its first home in Soho.

Today it is a thriving organisation, much bigger than a cursory look inside the door would suggest, occupying several storeys with a football pitch on the top floor. It engages 700 members in a variety of activities including boxing, football, karate, judo, cooking, graffiti art and theatre. Women make up around 25% of membership but have a much higher participation rate than the boys.

The club is located in Old Pye Street at the junction with St Ann's Lane - just as we are - but is not tied to any of the local estates. It aims to give any youngsters confidence and self-respect, opening their lives to new options. It has nurtured plenty of successes including one youth, Ramsey, who told the gathering that St Andrew's turned his life around and enabled him to become a cameraman with Sky News.

Compared with St Andrew's, our archive is a tiny space. One of the women at the celebration remembers buying sweets from there with her 50p a week pocket money when it was a sweet shop.

Although the club is thriving at the operational level, it also faces challenges as so many voluntary organisations do these days. It gets no financial assistance from government or local councils and is always looking out for new sponsors and donors. If you are interested contact them or donate via their website standrewsclub.com

With the help of a Heritage Lottery Fund grant the club is in the throes of digitising its archive including the history of youth clubs in general and all the issues of its own newsletter, The Chronicle, going back to 1883! The archive can be found at standrewsclub.com/heritage

We wish our neighbour every success for the future.

Henry V's Chantry Chapel Visit, October 2016

When Henry V died in France in 1422 aged 36, he had left instructions for a Chantry Chapel to be built in Westminster Abbey so prayers could be said in perpetuity for the repose of his soul. It has only rarely been opened to the public but as part of the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt, the Abbey kindly invited members of the Thorney Island Society to visit the chapel.

It was a delight worth waiting for. We climbed up a very narrow spiral staircase to the bijoux chapel situated immediately above Henry's tomb. It is open on three sides to the rest of the Abbey - though you would never know that walking around downstairs – and affords spectacular views of the other tombs and down the nave of the Abbey itself.

On the fourth side is the altar under which Henry's wife Catherine of Valois is buried - having been moved several times to different resting places in the Abbey on account of marrying beneath her station after Henry's death. Above are six resplendent statues of patron saints of England and France including St George (with his spear penetrating the dragon), St Denis of France and on the right St Edmund carrying his head in his arms having reputedly been beheaded by Ivar the Boneless. The blank plinth in the middle was probably of the Trinity but did not survive the iconoclasm of the Reformation. At the very top of the Chapel there is a shaft of light from Henry VII's Chapel illuminating a charming stained glass window of kings of England. Sadly, photos are not allowed inside the Abbey.

As if this was not enough our expert guide, the verger Ben Sheward, sprang a surprise - a visit to the Jerusalem Chamber, the actual place - if Shakespeare is to be believed - where the future Henry V tried on the crown of England thinking his father Henry IV was dying, only for him to wake up in anger. Father and son were reconciled and Henry IV realised that dying in this room fulfilled his destiny:

"It hath been prophesied to me many years,

I should not die but in Jerusalem,

Which vainly I suppos’d the Holy Land.

But bear me to that chamber, there I’ll lie,

In that Jerusalem shall Harry die."

Our thanks to the Dean and Chapter of Westminster Abbey for a most memorable visit.

Thorney Tales (10) - Oliver Cromwell v Charles I

Most Westminster walkers are familiar with the statue of Oliver Cromwell peering imperiously from his plinth on Cromwell Green, in front of Westminster Hall. It was erected in 1895 at a cost of £500 against furious opposition from Ireland. But not many people are aware of who is looking at him from immediately across the road. It is none other than a lead bust of Charles I, who was executed on Cromwell's orders. It is affixed to the side wall of St Margaret's Church. One of two busts of him found in a Fulham salvage depot in 1945 by Hedley Hope-Nicholson, secretary of the Society of King Charles the Martyr, one of which he donated to the church in 1950. The other is now at the Banqueting House further up Whitehall, where Charles was executed. Curiously, the statue of Charles I on horse back at the southern tip of Trafalgar Square is looking towards both his place of execution and the second bust of him. Cromwell is not being allowed to forget.

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