VICTORIA TOWER GARDENS
Proposed Holocaust Memorial in Victoria Tower Gardens
Canaletto, c.1750, view of Westminster Abbey from the gatehouse of Lambeth Palace.
In the lead up to Holocaust Memorial Day on the 27th January, the PM has promised to introduce legislation, to allow the creation of a Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre, next to the Palace of Westminster in Victoria Tower Gardens.
The scheme which was first proposed by David Cameron’s government in 2015 has received several setbacks, such as Westminster City Council’s planning committee unanimously voting against it and campaigners winning an appeal at the High Court last year, on the grounds that the Gardens 1900’s statute dictates that it has to be used solely as ‘a garden open to the public’.
Besides our sacrosanct laws protecting London’s green spaces, campaigners - many of whom support the idea of a new Holocaust Memorial - have put forward other reasons against the memorial’s location. These include its proximity to the Imperial War Museum and its moving Holocaust Galleries, the threat to the Gardens’s children playground, the high volume of visitors which would increase pollution and congestion in the area and the scheme’s tax payer funded £50 million cost, which could be invested in Holocaust education instead.
Until the creation of the Gardens, the area was still of an industrial character
The government has surely selected the Gardens for its proximity to the Kingdom’s political heart, where the fight for women’s vote and the abolition of slavery are already memorialised, in Emmeline Pankhurst’s statue and the Buxton Memorial Drinking Fountain respectively.
Pankhurst’s statue was the work of sculptor Arthur George Walker, who also created Florence Nightingale’s statue in Waterloo Place. Unveiled in 1929 it stood next to a central shrubbery which was removed in the 1950s. It was thence relocated to the original site of the Burghers of Calais. Buxton’s fountain on the other hand was erected in Parliament Square in 1865, until its relocation to its current spot in 1957, when the Square was given its present layout.
The contrast between the Square and the Gardens could not be any starker. The former is a hive of activity with swarming clusters of tourists, whilst the Gardens are a peaceful haven in the shadow of the Houses of Parliament, on the bank of the Thames. In fact, until the thirteen century the Gardens’s site would have been part of river. With the creation of the medieval Palace of Westminster the site was reclaimed and housed a slaughterhouse, the Abbey’s mill, St Peter’s Wharf and other workshops that serviced the Royal Palace and the monks at the Abbey.
Statue of Emmeline Pankhurst
By the Georgian period Rocque’s map of 1745, shows breweries, wharves for the unloading of coal, brick, stone and the uploading of dung, to be shipped off to market gardens. About 5 years later, Canaletto’s view from the gatehouse at Lambeth Palace, reveals in his typical attention to detail how densely built up the Millbank area had become.
Buxton memorial Drinking Fountain
In the second half of the 19th century this overcrowded industrial area was perceived as a fire risk to the new Palace of Westminster being built. By 1872 the site had been purchased from the Crown and cleared of all buildings. In 1977 the current embankment was completed, but there was disagreement about the use of this new reclaimed space, with some arguing for its development and those calling for a public open space. The latter faction headed by the indefatigable newspaper retailer, MP and First Lord of the Admiralty W.H.Smith won the argument. Smith, who donated £1,000 of the £2,400 required to create the Gardens, should also to be thanked for his successful campaign for the creation of the Victoria Embankment Gardens, which dashed the PM William Gladstone’s desire to develop this much larger reclaimed area from the river, to fill the Crown’s coffers.
The present Gardens was created in two stints, first in 1880-81 and later enlarged in 1914, to its present size. During the First World War, military huts were erected in its southern tip, until their removal in 1922. By this period the Gardens, was increasingly popular with children, for which the architect Philip Tilden (Chartwell House), was commissioned to design a drinking fountain and a sandpit, which were paid for by local merchant Henry Gage Spicer. The sandpit was eventually filled in in 1987 after health concerns, but by then other features had been added to the playground, which is still popular with local children.
The proposed Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre, would not replace the children’s playground which is located on the southern tip of the Gardens, but reduce it in size and separate it from the green space. The memorial would occupy 27% of the Gardens’s area, dominating the view and changing the character of the Gardens.
The Victoria Tower Garden, was one of about fifty potential sites submitted to the Holocaust Memorial Foundation (UKHMF). It would take a few issues of Guidelines to relate the selection process, but to keep it brief the promoters of the scheme, had all along the intention of bypassing the 'official process of selection and push for the Gardens regardless of any planning or other issues, relying on the Prime Minister’s support’. If this is not bad enough, it seems that the UKHMF and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG), were unaware of the statutory requirement to keep the Garden’s an open public space, until this was raised in 2019.
We think of the Victorians as great reformers, laying out the foundations of our modern urban spaces. Many of these reforms such as the conservation of parks, commons and gardens are deeply imbedded into our communal heritage psyche, so it is to be expected that the current Government’s stance to legislate in order to undo this statute won’t be an easy battle.
John Rocque’s map 1746.
Red square - Westminster Abbey
Yellow circle - present site of Victoria Towers Gardens, lined with wharves and buildings
Blue square - St John Smith Square
Purple star - site of Vauxhall Bridge, which has not been built yet
Brown square - Pimlico is still open fields / opposite, Lambeth is covered i market gardens
Another Canaletto painting showing Westminster Bridge being built. Notice only one of Westminster Abbey’s towers has been completed.
