Island Gardens & the Victorian View

Island Gardens in London is a riverside public park famous for offering the iconic view across the Thames towards Greenwich that Sir Christopher Wren considered the greatest in Europe. Originally preserved by the Admiralty, the land became neglected before local campaigner Will Crooks secured it for the public. On August 3, 1895, Island Gardens officially opened as the first public green space on the entire Isle of Dogs.

London Β· from the walk β€œDocks to Dollars” Β· audio ~5 min Β· Generated

Island Gardens, Island Gardens, London E14 3EA

When did Island Gardens open as the first public green space on London's Isle of Dogs?

Take a moment to look across the river. That extraordinary panorama of white colonnades, twin domes, and a distant hilltop observatory... you are standing on what Sir Christopher Wren himself reportedly called the site of the Greatest view in all of Europe.......... This view was judged to be the greatest view in Europe by Sir Christopher Wren in the seventeenth century. And here's the remarkable thing... it was deliberately Designed to be seen from exactly where you're standing right now.......... When Queen Mary the Second commissioned Wren to build the Royal Hospital for Seamen in sixteen ninety-four, an early controversy arose when it emerged that the original plans would have blocked the riverside view from the Queen's House. Queen Mary therefore ordered that the buildings be split, providing an avenue leading from the river through the hospital grounds up to the Queen's House and Greenwich Hill beyond. Wren's solution was a stroke of genius. He created a symmetrical arrangement of courts, domes and colonnades which, together with a careful use of perspective, framed the Queen's House without dwarfing it.......... That gap between the buildings? That wasn't an accident. It was a command from a queen who wanted the view of the Thames preserved... and in doing so, she gave US this view back.......... Now, around seventeen fifty, the Venetian painter Canaletto stood approximately where you are and painted this very scene. It is almost certain that the view from this location is the one that Canaletto's painting "Greenwich Hospital from the North Bank of the Thames" is taken from, though whether Canaletto himself actually visited the site is in doubt. There's actually more than one version of the painting. The version on loan to Tate Britain was certainly the earlier one, probably painted before Canaletto saw Greenwich himself and almost certainly in Italy. It has many of the same fanciful details and a high viewpoint well above river-bank level.......... But this little park has a story of its own. When shipbuilding and other industries began to spring up along the riverfront, the land that became Island Gardens was leased to the Admiralty, who wished to preserve the site to maintain the views to Greenwich. Lady Glengall, who owned the land, eventually agreed to a plan for landscaped gardens and five large villas set back from the river so they could not be seen from the hospital. But there was no interest from buyers... the wealthy businessmen did not want to live on the Isle of Dogs.......... Close to fifty years later, only one villa had been built, and the land had become a neglected open space. Locally it was known as "Scrap Iron Park."

...... Then came Will Crooks... a man born into Crushing poverty right here in Poplar. The son of a ship's stoker who lost his arm in an accident, his mother supported the family as a seamstress, but five of the children were temporarily forced to enter the Poplar workhouse. Crooks became a fierce campaigner for the working poor. He worked tirelessly to find open spaces and turn them into children's play-places, arguing that the Council should rescue every vacant plot of land in the heavily built-up area.......... On the third of August, eighteen ninety-five, the gardens were officially opened by Will Crooks, and they became the First public green space on the entire Island.......... Look beneath your feet. Somewhere nearby is the entrance to the Greenwich Foot Tunnel, which opened on the fourth of August, nineteen oh two. The tunnel replaced an expensive and sometimes unreliable ferry service, allowing workers living south of the Thames to reach their workplaces in the London docks and shipyards.......... So take it in. Three hundred years of deliberate design... a queen's command, an architect's genius, a painter's eye, and a working-class hero's fight for a little piece of paradise. All converging on this one small patch of grass beside the Thames.

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