Month: March 2017

Sticks in the Smoke 51: Kyoto Garden, Holland Park, Kensington

Looking for frogspawn (Thursday 9 March 2017)

I came to Holland Park last summer and made two drawings between the August showers from this green and multifarious mix of formal gardens, lawns, historic buildings and wild woodland (see Sticks in the Smoke 26). That day, on my way across the park I took a loop around the Kyoto Garden. But it was the height of the Pokemon Go craze and the paths were teeming with players excitedly brandishing their phones. So I resolved to return at a quieter time. So here I am today.

This is the first warm day of the season. I stroll through Holland Park in the sunshine. Round a bend and a fox is lying there, stretched out and lapping from a puddle. It eyes me

as I slowly approach and only bothers to wearily raise its scruffy body when I’m as close as a tree shadow’s width. It drags its tail tip through the puddle and disappears around a laurel bush.

I take the sun patch dappled steps up into the Kyoto Garden. Around the bamboo fence and this mini oriental landscape of water, rocks, trees and carefully placed ishi-dōrō (stone lanterns) is revealed. It was created in 1991 by the Garden Association of Kyoto (the original imperial capital of Japan) in collaboration with the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and was opened by The Prince of Wales and The Crown Prince of Japan as a part of the Japan Festival celebrations. It was designed and laid out by a team of specialist gardeners from Japan as a traditional Kaiyushiki, or a pond- stroll garden, where the visitor walks in a clockwise direction around a small lake and is presented with a series of scenes intended to be viewed at aesthetically and spiritually significant points around the path. Benches are placed at some of these key points so that visitors can relax and contemplate.

Just inside the entrance is a round stone tsukubai (a washbasin for visitors to purify themselves by rinsing hands); no water running today so I have to explore the garden in an unpurified state. I put my hands in my pockets and start my clockwise circuit. A stillness here, the pond is barely ruffled. Japanese willows fringed with magenta. Maples. Birches reflected, vertical bands. Rounded shrubs in blossom fringe the bank and their reflections complete circles in the water.

Even after our wild and messy winter, this space seems perfect and tended with care. Ropes sling between bamboo posts; visitors are kept strictly to the paths. No straying onto lawns, which undulate up to and into the surrounding woods (where the technique of ‘shakkei‘ uses elements outside of the garden to create the illusion that the garden is more expansive than it is). I follow around and down towards the staggered granite slab bridge, which hangs over the water at the foot of a rocky waterfall. Normally the sound of running water trickles out across the whole garden but it’s not flowing today. A gardener tells me that the lake has recently been cleaned out and refilled. Which is also why the giant koi aren’t in the pond at the moment; they’ve been moved to an indoor pool for a mini break but

being returned next week. I wait for a knot of young Spanish tourists to finish taking group selfies on the bridge. Coins sparkle in the water.

I complete my circuit and set up close to the entrance to draw across the pond back towards the bridge (see drawing at top). The sun warm on the back of my neck. Then almost hot, like summer.

The garden fills with visitors but there’s a respectful and contemplative hush here. It’s not that you don’t hear sounds from beyond the space: traffic, sirens, dogs barking, planes and the strident calls of peacocks; it’s just that in this special space designed for meditation and reflection, they simply have no significance. The only time this reverence is disrupted is when a squadron of parakeets swoop over the garden, their shrill squawks piercing the peace.

A pair of moorhens paddle like clockwork, trailing little shimmery wakes across the pond surface

The paths are narrow and I have to stand aside to allow room for mothers pushing buggies past. A little dark haired girl of about 4 is holding her younger sisters’s hand and squints at my drawing. She asks “Is there frogspawn in there?” And I reply I don’t think so. And she says they saw some frogspawn earlier in another pond in Holland Park and then tells me in detail the life

story of tadpoles and frogs, almost without taking a breath. I say thankyou and their mother smiles indulgently as she steers her daughters away. A little later I look across and see them kneeling on the bridge and peering down into the water. Looking for frogspawn.

A crescent of lawns and shrubberies wraps to the south. This is the Fukushima garden, opened in 2012 as an adjunct to the Kyoto Garden. Designed by famed Kyoto landscape gardener Yasuo Kitayama, this was a gift from Japan to honour the help and support of the UK following the 2011 tsunami and nuclear disaster at Fukushima. It’s a simple space, half hoops in bamboo fringe the pebble paths. Weeping birches trail their branches to the grass. Two girls drink tea and chat on a shaded bench. A path leads to the top of the garden and goes no further. Just some trees and rocks and an ishi-dōrō. And the glint of pond below.

A pair of peacocks appear and begin to strut haughtily, owning the garden, tails swishing and flaring; posing for photographs, electric blue necks proudly plumped.

In his ‘Sticks in the Smoke’ project, Nick Andrew has been regularly visiting, researching and drawing different publicly accessible parks or gardens in London since January 2016, exploring the theme of city green spaces from the perspective of a rural landscape painter. The first two sketchbooks will be published as a book in late 2018. www.nickandrew.co.uk . Nick is grateful to London Parks & Gardens Trust for their support www.londongardenstrust.org.

Kyoto Garden, Holland Park, Kensington, London W11 4UA
Open 7.30 am to half an hour before dusk
Google earth view here

Sticks in the Smoke 50: Victoria Tower Gardens, Westminster

Sore thumb and golden top hat. (Wednesday 1 March 2017)

Turn through the northern gate into a calm circular courtyard, an anteroom to the main park, a sigh of relief after the stress of zigzagging the packed pavements of Abingdon Street past the Houses of Parliament. The resolute figure of Emmeline Pankhurst, sculpted by Arthur Walker dominates this little space (unveiled in 1930, just 2 years after her death and 2 years after women achieved the same voting rights as men, for which she campaigned most of her life), gesturing towards Parliament with her right hand. Spring blossom and a cluster of daffodils decorate the beds either side of the path. Victoria Tower soars in its majestic perspective seeming to pierce today’s low cloud. The path leads through and the long, triangular 6 acre park opens out. A wild grassy and shrubby fringe garnishes the base of the sedum roofed Parliamentary education rooms. Benches teem with excitedly talkative school groups eating their picnics while another group funnels into the visitors’ entrance.

Auguste Rodin‘s powerful sculpture ‘The Burghers of Calais‘ sits at the conflux of arching paths. A dark and looming presence above the wide lawn. It was installed in the gardens after the 1st World War. This is Rodin’s memorial to self sacrifice: the six officials of the French port of Calais who surrendered themselves to end a brutal English siege in 1347 during the Hundred Year’s War. The grim and tortured figures, faces downcast, have their

backs turned to the Palace of Westminster, in opposition to its soaring gilded stonework.

A very different landscape here a thousand years ago- mud flats and reedy marshes, washed by tides. The river wide and swirling. We’d be standing at the southern edge of Thorney Island, originally a wild and inhospitable eyot but, tamed over centuries by the Benedictine monks of Westminster, it became the location for royal palaces and the seat of government, surrounded by natural defensive moats. Fortified walls surrounded the cluster of stone structures and towers of the original Palace of Westminster and Abbey buildings. Over the following centuries, when defensive needs grew less, the River Tyburn, which held the island between its two tributary branches, became more of a hindrance to easy passage to and from the surrounding city. It was eventually diverted into culverts and sewers and filled in.

Before the 19th century the City’s trade was largely river borne, so much of its river frontage was covered with wharves and quays for unloading building materials, fuel, fish, grain and goods from overseas. A tangle of warehouses and sheds spread out behind. By the time the present Houses of Parliament were built in the mid 1800s, there was a cement works here, along with sperm whale oil refinery and flour mills.

This riverside park is often seen as a background to TV interviews with Westminster MPs. At times of parliamentary crisis you can guarantee a shot of a junior minister avoiding questions while a Thames barge chugs into one ear and out the other. No camera crews to be seen today though.

I walk the embankment path, and weave the line of broad and spreading plane trees which reach their branches out across the tarnished silver Thames. Lunching tourists occupying the seats on raised platforms. Commanding views across the river to Lambeth Palace. Then, at the centre of the park: the Buxton Memorial: a brightly coloured, ice cream cornet that’s been thrust upside down into the ground by a spoilt giant. This neo gothic confection was commissioned by Charles Buxton MP to celebrate those MPs, including his father, Sir T. Fowell Buxton, who campaigned for the abolition of slavery, which was achieved in 1834. It was designed by Samuel Teulon, and built in 1865, originally in Parliament Square, then moved here in 1957. Marble pillars support limestone arches decorated with stone florets and gargoyle like lizards. The pointy roof a colourful

patchwork of enamelled metal. All to give shelter to drinking fountains. Still intact with granite basins and spouts but no longer used in these days of bottled water. A woman is sitting in one of the basins, feet on a ledge, smoking and chatting on her phone.

As described in the posts for several other gardens in this series ( see Sticks in the Smoke 3, 8, 15 and 31), as part of a Metropolitan Board of Works plan to build a modern sewerage system for London, administered by Joseph Bazalgette, embankments were built along the river frontage, which housed the sewers and also, in some cases, underground railway lines. A partial embankment was built along here in the 1870s which allowed a small square ornamental garden to be laid out at the southern entrance to Parliament. By the early 1900s, the rest of the riverside land had been compulsory purchased. The wharves and warehouses were demolished and the embankment extended southwards. The land was raised using spoil excavated from the creation of docks downstream, and the gardens were extended a further 300 metres or so to the foot of Lambeth Bridge.

At the western end, where the park narrows, a curving wall is topped with a pair of modernist sculptures of goats with kids (created by Philip Tilden, arts and crafts designer, in 1923). The ground behind is devoted to play: circular sandpit, slide, swings and climbing structures, landscaped with flowerbeds and shrubs. I climb the wide steps up towards Lambeth Bridge. From this elevated level I have a view back across the park. It encompasses everything from the Victoria Tower, the Buxton Memorial, the wide Thames downstream to the flattened arches of Westminster Bridge. I unpack my things and set up to draw.

Behind me the traffic on Lambeth Bridge is a relentless roar. But from down below I hear an intermittent jingling. It’s a square of step chimes in the playground on which children are dancing tunes. Someone’s close to achieving “twinkle twinkle little star”, so nearly got it, when the noble bongs of Big Ben drown out all lesser sounds for the song of one o’clock.

Tourists on their way down the steps stop to look at my drawing (see top). A trio of Italians take photos of it and as I step back I’m suddenly aware I’ve made the Tower way too big, clumsy and out of proportion, damn it! Standing out like a great fat sore thumb on the page! When they’ve gone I cover it with lashings of correction fluid and rework it at half the width it was.

A cruiser passes under the bridge and its wake laps the exposed shingle. River breeze ruffles the water and shakes the plane branches. It feels chill and damp and a few raindrops land on my paper but I persist as they get more insistent, peppering the paint. I quite like the effect, but decide to look for cover and head for the WCs, just under these steps. Well worth the 20p entry: warmth and shelter for a while, but even better: a hand dryer! I waft my damp sketchbook under the blast of heat until it feels as crisp as a sun warmed sheet.

I walk through the drizzle to the Buxton Memorial and lay my sketchbook out on a basin, protected from the rain. To draw through the frame of polished pink pillars across the rising tide to the tall structures on the far bank, ranged like the teeth of a broken comb: the medieval battlemented Lollards and Lauds Towers of Lambeth Palace; the watchtower of

the old St Thomas’s hospital– a riverside perch for seagulls. And misty in the background- The Shard and the high rise blocks of Kennington.

This park is the proposed site for a Holocaust Memorial, announced by David Cameron in 2016. A range of shortlisted designs were unveiled on Holocaust Memorial Day 2017 (27 January), from artists and architects, including Anish Kapoor, Daniel Libeskind and Rachel Whiteread. However, the siting is controversial. Partly that it will be a massive intrusion into this airy and open space, but more importantly: that the memorial is far too significant to be hidden away here, around the side of Parliament. Why can’t it be placed in a more prominent position (such as Parliament Square or College Green), where it can be an ever present and insistent reminder of the greatest of human tragedies? (You can follow this link to sign a petition to Save Victoria Tower Gardens).

My drawing nearly finished (see below). The drizzle has eased. A smartly suited businessman comes over, thrusts his phone towards me and asks if I can take a photo of him in front of Parliament to send back home (I think he’s from India). He stands stiffly to attention and grimaces at me. I take the picture then hand back the phone. He thanks me and wanders off, looking at the screen. Then turns around and comes back, shaking his head, “I wasn’t smiling enough, do you mind taking another one?” He stands just the same, but this time I say “Smile!” But he doesn’t really, he just stretches his mouth a bit wider horizontally. I take the photo, then realise he has Victoria Tower exactly sticking out of the top of his head like a very tall, golden top hat. But he seems satisfied, nods, and walks away.

Victoria Tower Gardens, Westminster, London. SW1P 3JA
Open dawn – dusk
Google earth view here

Sticks in the Smoke 49: Lincolns Inn Fields, Holborn

Storm Doris. And her opposite. (Thursday 23 February 2017)

So very windy today – London’s catching the swishing skirts of Storm Doris. I pass many people gripping their jackets and coats tightly around them as they dash to pick up some lunch.

I take an anti clockwise route around the perimeter path of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, which wraps this space, the largest garden square in London. The paths are strewn with 049b twigs, shed from the mature plane trees which give this space its crisscrossing vaulted roof. Clatters more with every gust. No one seems much bothered by this fall of wood; there’s a healthy flow of lunchtime walkers in ones and twos and more. A mix of students, lawyers and office workers, local residents walking dogs. But, much more than any other park I’ve visited in this project: so many runners, fitness groups. The slap of trainers on tarmac. And, on the south quarter, overshadowed by the imposing portico of the Royal College of Surgeons and Hunterian Museum, are the tennis courts, bursting out of their nets with vigour and volleys.

Bounce back 500 years or so and this was a cattle grazed pasture called Cup Field. Londoners came out here from the City to fill their lungs with fresh air or take part in open air sports such as jousting, swordfighting or archery. Turnstiles were placed on the footpaths into the fields to allow people in, but to stop livestock straying. These remembered in the names of three narrow alleyways just to the north of the park: Little Turnstile, Great Turnstile and New Turnstile.

Lincoln’s Inn itself is one of London’s four Inns of Court, housed in a collection of fine historic buildings set in a collegiate enclave of courtyards and gardens, just to the east of the Fields. A diaper patterned brick wall surrounds and encloses its eleven acre estate. Lawyers were originally encouraged to move up here to the hamlet of Holborn in the 13th century by the third Earl of Lincoln after a royal decree that no legal education could take place in the City of London. The Inn became formally established and purchased the present site in the 16th century. The turreted towers and tall Gothic windows of the Great Hall (built in the 1840s) and the Library (completed in the 1870s), peer out over these fields.

I’m blown towards the centre of the park, where a large gravelled circle is a hub to the four north, east, south and west tarmac paths plus one earthy diagonal shortcut track worn across the northeast lawn. A surrounding ring of mature plane trees. Dead centre to this is an octagonal bandstand or shelter. A brass plaque set into the floor reads: “Near this spot was beheaded William Lord Russell, a lover of constitutional liberty 21 July AD 1683”. This was the site of occasional public executions. Lord William Russell (mentioned in ‘Sticks in the Smoke’ 45 Russell Square, Bloomsbury) was executed (with four clumsy hamfisted blows of the axe, it’s said) for his alleged part in the Rye House Plot: the attempted assassination of King Charles II. He was later proven innocent and posthumously pardoned. Which I’m sure made him feel a whole lot better!

I start setting my drawing things up under the shelter but realise it’s filling with people in sports gear getting ready for a class, doing warm up exercises and stretching and making appropriate sporty grunts and snorts. I back away and set up instead in front of a bushy thicket to draw the view across the park, with the former Land Registry Building (now a department of the London School of Economics) a stately redbrick backdrop. I start scribbling, one hand holding my easel from being blown over, trying to describe the upper tree branches swinging and swooping with the wind, a curly, jiggly aerial dance. There’s even movement detectable in the upper trunks. The gale rages overhead in waves of roaring bursts, but thankfully no rain. With every wave, a great crashing racket like an explosion! It turns out to be plastic sheeting covering scaffolding at the northwest corner of the square. The exercise class goes on regardless, under the canopy, led by a girl in lime green lycra. Her voice shrill across the gravel, enthusiastically counting her victims through a sequence of acts of self torture.

Across to my right, the Fields Cafe parasols are being buffeted and shaken. Five hundred years ago, that spot was the site of a gunpowder house (after many accidental explosions and fires in the City, gunpowder storage was moved out to fields like this, well away from habitation or means of detonation). But London was fast expanding in this direction and it wasn’t long before developers saw the plump potential of these fields for building. Lincoln’s Inn enjoyed its rural and pastoral outlook so took a dim and nimby view to proposals for development. It was only after several decades of negotiations between the landowners and the Inn that agreement was reached whereby houses could be built, but the Inn had control over their design . And these seven acres where I’m drawing today, was to be kept green, with walks and trees and lawns.

In the 1700s, residents of the square, outraged by roguery, thievery and rubbish tipping in the fields appealed to have the square enclosed. Which it was in the 1730s, making it a private and more genteel space of lawns and paths and, for a while, a duck pond just about where I’m standing. Later in that century, many of the fine houses around this square were taken on by wealthy lawyers, attracted by its proximity to the Royal Law Courts. Barrister’s chambers were founded and solicitors’ offices opened (including Farrer & Co who are still there today, in their stately premises at No. 66; solicitors to much of the aristocracy, and the Queen).

Drawing finished (see at top), I shake a couple of twigs out of my rucksack and haul it on my back and explore the rest of the park. Sunshine flings tree shadows across the fields. Dogs of all sorts are having a field day, with a million sticks to chase after. A group of runners are sprinting across the gravel, crunching woody debris as they go. Parks workers are trying to collect up the fallen twigs, but one of their large canvas sacks has escaped from the truck. It careers past, billowing, dancing; it pirouettes a full circle on one of its corners before being whisked away behind a stand of shrubs.

The layout of the park hasn’t changed much since the start of the nineteenth century, with perimeter shrubberies, trees and bandstand. Towards the eastern side was a little subtropical plantation, which is still here. The park was eventually opened to the public in 1894 and was immediately popular, being pretty well the only substantial piece of public green space for at least half a mile in any direction. Bands played on summer afternoons. Areas were set aside for tennis and golf putting. As I walk the paths I pass several memorials, but the one that stands out the most commemorates Margaret MacDonald the social reformer (wife of Ramsey MacDonald, first Labour prime minister), who died in 1911, way too early at the age of 41. A curving bench seat topped with a sculpture (created by sculptor Richard Goulden), of this beneficent woman, tending a twisting clutch of playing children and inscribed below: “This seat placed here in memory of Margaret MacDonald who spent her life in helping others”.

The sun catches specks of pink standing out against the dark of a holly tree. Blossom glowing on bare black viburnum sticks. I scramble around and start a drawing from behind them (see below), looking through and across the open stretch of northern lawns. Leaves scratching the back of my neck as the tree sways. Cold gusts in my face. A constant parade of runners pass. A game of three a side football gets underway on the worn grass. Bags and coats for goals.

And then, from the corner of my eye, a tightly raincoated figure, bent over, almost double, shuffling along. Painfully, painfully, picking her way with a pair of sticks. Woollen hat pulled over ears, bag over shoulder. Advancing so very slowly, gaze intent on dragging feet and knocking the odd twig away with a stick. She pauses in front of me and tortuously turns her head round from under her collar to look up. I smile and nod. She looks for a while; a slight tremor, then gets back to her mission. It takes a full five minutes for her to walk across my field of vision. Quiet and measured: the very opposite of today’s Storm Doris. And I think: of all the people in this park today, exercising, stretching and pushing themselves to the limit, it’s that bowed and aged soul who wins, hands down, the gold medal for endurance and determination.

Lincolns Inn Fields, Holborn, London. WC2A 3TL

Open 8am – dusk
Google earth view here