Month: April 2017

Sticks in the Smoke 54: Altab Ali Park, Whitechapel, London

“The shade of my tree is offered to those who come and go fleetingly” (Thursday 6 April 2017)

It’s already warm as I step out from East Aldgate tube station and make my way across Whitechapel High Street towards the entrance to Altab Ali Park, not noticing the cycle lane before almost getting mown down by a cyclist who glares at me as I jump back.

Since about 60AD, when the Romans built a road to link London with Colchester (the original Roman capital of Britain), this thoroughfare has been traversed by a whole host of humanity over the millennia, from units of legionaries, peasants with oxcarts, livestock herders, merchants and messengers to today’s van drivers, office workers, cycle couriers, ambulance paramedics and bus passengers. I’m at the point where Whitechapel High Street becomes Whitechapel Road and the busy northeast bound A11 trunk road.

By the 13th century, wayside taverns and inns became established along this road to serve and accommodate travellers to and from the City. A jumbling village of wood and thatch dwellings grew. A church was built, a chapel of ease called St Mary Matfelon (‘Matte Felon’ was the medieval name for knapweed, a common treatment for sores and wounds; it’s possible that the chapel also served as a place for healing injured travellers). Constructed from chalk rubble brought from Kent, sunlight would bounce from its rough surface making it shimmer brightly like a beacon above the surrounding hovels, hence the village name ‘White Chapel‘.

Being a good half mile outside the city walls, Whitechapel attracted many of the less sociable crafts and industries that were nevertheless essential to City life, such as slaughterhouses, horse skinning, horn working, brewing, tanning and foundries (the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, a few steps up the road from here, was established in 1570. It cast Westminster’s Big Ben and Philadelphia’s Liberty Bell, but sadly has founded its final bell and is closing their doors this May). Just to the north, Brick Lane (and its popular Sunday market), is where brick and tile manufacturing took place from the 15th century, using local brick earth deposits.

A diverse mix of trees line the park’s perimeter: planes, birches, Scots pines. A line of twisty trunked robinias, newly decorated with delicate yellowgreen leaflets, the sun making them fluoresce against the neutrals of background buildings. A pair of starlings chase each other, sweeping twice around the park around and through the tree canopies, chirrking crossly before landing on a 6th floor balcony in the apartment block which looms over the southern edge. Above them the cloudless sky is a summery blue.

In the late 1600s the crumbling church was rebuilt in NeoClassical style. But by the mid 19th century this was considered pagan and ugly so was replaced with a fine Gothic revivalist church (photo 2). It had an exterior pulpit for al fresco summer preaching and was famous for its clock which projected out over the street (replicated by a modern clock, fixed to a lamppost, ticking in roughly the same position as the original). The churchyard was no longer used for burials and was planted with trees and shrubs. Today the only reminders that this was once a burial ground are a few eroded gravestones standing in sad rows at the edges of the park, and a prominent chest tomb built in the early 1800s for the Maddock family who were local timber merchants.

I set up near the central path to draw towards the northwest entrance, the ‘Maddock’ tomb in the foreground and the glassy blues of the Gherkin and city skyscrapers behind, glimmering through the warm air. A busy flow of people to and fro along the path. (see drawing at top).

Lunchtime fills the park. Bodies sit in sun or shade. The day heats up, I begin to regret choosing such an exposed spot. A family picnicking nearby seem to be celebrating a young daughter’s birthday. A sudden sparkle catches the corner of my eye- an eruption of bubbles blown by dad soar into the air and fly past me and up over the lawn.

St Mary’s church was firebombed in the 2nd World War and left in ruins. After the war it doubled as a precarious playground for local children and a nocturnal hangout for the homeless. After local complaints the ruins were cleared (sections of the churchyard walls alongside Marylebone Road and the entrance gate stonework still remain) and London County Council landscaped the grounds which were opened as St Mary’s Gardens in 1966.

With every century, the population of Whitechapel has increased in diversity. Like a tapestry on a loom, with successive wefts of immigration adding to its sumptuous and richly detailed substance. In the 17th century Huguenot refugees from France set up their weaving workshops, the origins of this area’s most prominent and longest lasting industry: textiles and clothing. Workers were attracted from across the world by the availability of jobs: Irish, European Jews and, from the mid 20th century, immigrants from Bangladesh (formally East Bengal) all wove their distinctive cultures into the fabric of Whitechapel’s community.

As immigration grew, so did far right extremism in the east end of London. With marches and banners and slogans, the National Front were fuelling resentment on these streets. Incidents of racial violence were increasing. On the evening of 4 May 1978, Altab Ali (a 25 year old mechanic, who’d recently arrived in London from Bangladesh) was walking to his bus stop after work at a textiles factory in Brick Lane, when he was chased and attacked by three teenagers who stabbed him to death in Adler Street, just to my right. This horrific murder was a huge shock. On the day of Ali’s funeral, thousands took part in a demonstration against racial violence, marching from here to Whitehall. The local Bengali population were mobilised and, through their campaigning, were able to rid Whitechapel of the National Front and, in doing so, became more cohesive as a community. In 1989, St Mary’s Gardens was renamed Altab Ali Park to honour Ali and all victims of racial violence. In 2010 the Altab Ali Foundation was founded which, every 4th May holds Altab Ali Day to commemorate all victims of racism.

Rising from just behind the original churchyard gateway is a sculptural arch (photo 4) created by Welsh blacksmith sculptor David Petersen. It was commissioned in 1989 as a memorial to Altab Ali and other victims of racism. The design combines elements from Bengali and western Gothic architecture, but is woven together with playfully draped ironwork ribbons, symbolising the coming together of these two cultures in East London. At its opening, children processed under the arch wearing headdresses inspired by the arch and carrying red carnations (it is a Bengali tradition to pass under an arch at important events such as at weddings and funerals). An extract from a poem by Bengali poet, Rabindranath Tagore, was carved along the park’s central park, reading “The shade of my tree is offered to those who come and go fleetingly” (could be a slogan for all public green spaces). Sadly this text was subsequently tarmacked over during relandscaping in 2011.

The southern section of the park is undulating hummocks adorned with sculptural tree stumps and large boulders and planted with stands of birches and pines. Also a viewing platform across to the Shaheed Minar monument (photo 5), a smaller replica of the one in Dhaka, Bangladesh, representing a mother and her martyred sons. Erected in 1999, it commemorates students from Dhaka University and activists of the Bengali Language Movement who were shot and killed by Pakistani police during a demonstration in 1952 demanding official status for their native tongue. Today, geometric shadows rake across its platform and over a heaped collection of dried flowers and wreaths and banners in Bengali script: decaying remnants from Martyr’s day on 21 February: the anniversary of the massacre (activities which take place on this day include traditional Bengali Alpana painting on the paved areas of the park, using starch paste paint to create motifs and patterns).

The front section of the park, bordering Whitechapel Road, is as flat as a floor, where once the churches stood (see photo 2). In 2011, this was landscaped by students from the nearby Sir John Cass School of Art, Architecture and Design. Stone architectural blocks were carved based on pieces uncovered in an archaeological dig. These are embedded in the lawn, along with fragments of tiled flooring, a surreal hint at the ghost of the 17th century church (photo 6). A congregation of lunchers are sitting on or amongst this stonework, relaxing and chatting and letting today’s sermon of sunshine wash over them. Zigzagging through is a raised terrace (photo 3) which follows the outline of the Victorian church and also acts as seating, picnic table, impromptu bar, children’s play wall and performance stage.

In need of shade I close my sketchbook and walk across to sit on the edge of the raised walkway. Further along, a man with curly white hair (in ageing rock star fashion), leather jacket and croc shoes is strumming a guitar. At my feet the ground is scuffed soil imprinted with shoe sole patterns. There’s a litter of beer bottle tops, cig ends, plane tree twigs and a scatter of dropped smarties. Just next to me a man lifts his daughter down from his shoulders to sit on the edge and she drops her fluffy toy lamb face first into the earth. The little girl cries and, for a second or two, before dad snatches it up, the lamb has a bent cigarette stuck to its stitched mouth.

I look up. Shadows across the blank walls of Adler Street seem like painted Alpana patterns. Over the roofs and treetops the moon hangs like a hazy bubble, hanging flimsy in the sapphire sky. A Virgin jet climbing steeply cuts across it.

(The Altab Ali Story by Julie Begum is being performed by Richmix on 4th May 2018. Go to https://www.richmix.org.uk/events/theatre/altab-ali-story for details.)

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.

Altab Ali Park, Whitechapel Road, London E1 7QR
Unrestricted opening
Google earth view here

Line drawings of churches reproduced from London Borough of Tower Hamlets Information panel (photo 2).

Sticks in the Smoke 53: Battersea Park (North), London

Pagoda and plinths (Thursday 30 March 2017)

I cross Chelsea Bridge on this perfect sunshine day and enter the park through Chelsea Gate. A meander westwards along the wide riverside terrace of lawns and enclosed shrubberies, stands of planes, chestnuts and limes. Bursts of blossom. Past the entrance to the Children’s Zoo. A glimpse of lemurs performing high- rope acrobatics. I wander across to the embankment path, dodging the many joggers and dog walkers. Then, when it starts to get hot, I escape back to the relative shade of the tree- lined North Carriage Drive, where cyclists whisk past on two wheels, and processions of riders on three- wheeled recumbent bikes (hired from londonrecumbents.com in the park). I soon realise that, at 200 acres, this is another huge green space that I’ll have to tackle in more than one visit. So today I decide to concentrate on the northern half of the park.

Originally the tidal Thames spilled across this low lying land. Mud banks and reedbeds were washed by tributaries and the now continuous south bank was once a strew of islands. Battersea is first written in Anglo Saxon as Badrices īeg (meaning the island of Badric). There was a manor here, presented by the King Caedwalla of Wessex to Saint Earconwald (Bishop of London 675- 693). It was used as a spiritual retreat by his sister, Saint Ethelburga, Abbess of Barking, whose memory is held in the names of a nearby street and community centre. These were marshy meadows to the east of the farming village, which was roughly where St Mary’s Church, Battersea now stands. Over the centuries, the riverbanks were raised, ditches dug to drain the land and streams channelled into culverts. Battersea Fields were some of the most productive in the district, with a patchwork of market gardens growing vegetables (including the famous ‘Battersea Bunches’ of asparagus) and herbs, including lavender to sweeten homes in the stinking City across the river.

The park is teeming- as well as the successions of runners and dog walkers and cyclists, there are tourists, families and parents with buggies. Toddlers lunge unsteadily across the grass arms held up and pudgy fingers spread. Groups of schoolkids on Easter holiday playing football, unruly piles of jackets and scooters.

And there’s the Peace Pagoda, looming closer, its double roofs spread like bats wings, proudly commanding this stretch of the park. A beacon of serenity. Built by monks and followers of a Japanese Buddhist movement in 1985 to advance the cause of peace, its large gilt-bronze reliefs gleam out, depicting significant stages of Buddha’s life. Maintained by the saffron- robed monk, Gyoro Nagase, who spends his days in meditation within. A sound of cheering from the grassy banks outside the pagoda momentarily breaks the calm: a group of about 20 excited students (?) are holding up giant polystyrene letters and posing for photos.

I set up to draw under the spread of a just budding oak tree, surrounded by a flock of daffodils and enclosed in a ring of ironwork fencing. A further outer ring of temporary fencing is fixed with warning posters reading ‘BEWARE!, Processionary Moths and Caterpillars. KEEP OUT!’. (I look this up on my phone and read about the spreading invasion of these oak loving creatures, known to have toxic hairs which can cause rashes and skin irritation. Luckily it’s a bit early in the season). To the left of the Pagoda is the haze of Chelsea Bridge. My eye traces the opposite Chelsea riverfront upstream of the bridge. Almost entirely free of high rise or modern development. A progression of fine brickbuilt Dutch gabled townhouses behind a tree lined embankment. I can see the treetops of Ranelagh Gardens, which I drew on that sultry day last August (see Sticks in the Smoke 28). River breeze softens the traffic noise to a gentle hum.

Back in the 1700s this was a popular place for day trips, for its mostly rural location by the river, a ridge of woodland to the south. Visitors would arrive here by ferry boat at the picturesque Red House Tavern and walk out across the fields, play sports and games or go pheasant shooting. However, by the early 19th century, the tavern had gained an infamous reputation for gambling, debauchery and theft. In the 1840s, the local vicar, Rev Robert Eden put together a plan to solve these antisocial problems. He proposed the creation of a large Royal Park and was financially supported by Property developer, Thomas Cubitt (who had an eye on the potential for building here!). This received Parliamentary approval in 1845, with a grant of £200,000 from the Commission for Improving the Metropolis to buy the land and develop the park.

The park and gardens were laid out by Sir James Pennethorne to have carriage drives running around its perimeter, plantings of trees and shrubberies. Terraces of tall town houses were built on surrounding avenues. Battersea Park was opened in 1858 by Queen Victoria. Chelsea Bridge was completed in the same year which made the park easily accessible (Albert bridge, at the west corner, opened 15 years later). The embankment wall was completed in 1877, giving the park this broad riverside esplanade.

The park became increasingly used for sports: the first FA rules football match happened here in 1864. Grounds for cricket, croquet and tennis were rolled and laid out. Today there’s a well used running track and tennis courts in the north east portion, all weather astroturf pitches, cricket ground and football pitches in the west. I look up from my drawing- a sweating runner has paused in the shade for a rest, hands on knees, panting at the ground.

During both World Wars, Battersea Park was roped into the war effort with the football pitches dug up for vegetable growing, shrubberies turned into a pig farm and the croquet ground used to site anti- aircraft guns. Great grey silver barrage balloons floated overhead like whales, to protect against air raids.

Drawing finished (see above), I pack my things and continue my walk, following the North Carriage Drive as it turns and becomes the West Carriage Drive. The day warms and park visitors lounge summerlike on the grass. I’m led by a leafy pathway into the Old English Garden, an idyllic sanctuary of rose beds and herbaceous borders laid out in 1912. Herringbone brick paths. Lilacs and blossoming fruit trees. A gushing fountain urn and cool shaded arbours. Old men on benches with newspapers seem as permanent as the surrounding walls. Today, I could easily and happily join them and take root here. But I leave and continue across the wide green expanses of the cricket grounds and busy football pitches. The long Central Avenue cuts through as straight as a throw, once lined with elms. Today strongly decorated with shadows from its parade of plane trees. I arrive at the central hub of the park, like a circular forest clearing, where the bandstand stands. An intriguing choice of six pathways lead away.

I take a path northwards, which brings me out into blinding sunshine. When my eyes get used to the dazzle I see that I’ve arrived in the 1950s. This was the site of the Festival Pleasure Gardens, one of the locations for the Festival of Britain, which took place across the country in 1951, intended as a colourful and exuberant celebration after the devastation of war ravaged Britain. To lift people’s view out of the greyness of the postwar years, towards a more optimistic, exciting and brave new world of design, colour and technology. Here, colourful geometric planting displays by the garden designer Russell Page, were interspersed with theatrical sets, pavilions, tea terraces, a miniature railway and fountain pools by artists and designers including John Piper, Rowland Emett and Osbert Lancaster. One of the most popular features was the Guinness Clock which, every 15 minutes, gave a fantastical kinetic performance. After the end of the festival year, most of the structures were dismantled but some of the original landscaping remain, such as paved areas, lawns and the fountain pool. In recent years, some features have been restored or replicated in the 50’s ‘contemporary‘ style, to give a sense of the original festival feel: flower displays, a whimsical pergola, tea tent, restored fountains. The ‘sputnik‘ design railings remind me of a primary coloured 1950s magazine rack that my parents had (used to make a satisfying doinking sound when hit with a wooden spoon!).

I set up to draw at the edge of the rectangular fountain pool. It feels like a lido, the heat shimmering off the water. Foursquare groups of pollarded trees stand around the pool edge, alternating with oblong flower beds, planted with red and yellow tulips. A pair of brown and ochre Egyptian geese are very active, flying from the poolside and honking every time a dog or child gets too close, sometimes landing on one of the blue and white fountain podiums and strutting angrily.

There was also a funfair which sat to the east of the Pleasure Gardens. This continued as Battersea Fun Fair for another two decades. The main attraction was the Big Dipper rollercoaster, but a tragic accident in which 5 children were killed led to the eventual closure of the funfair in 1974. From where I am I can just see the white roof of Battersea Evolution, which now occupies the funfair site. It hosts temporary events, conferences and exhibitions (including the Affordable Art Fair, where I’ve had work on show several times).

A group of excited schoolgirls, all wearing hijabs, form a lively sculptural arrangement on top of an empty plinth which sits above the fountain pool. Classmates keep arriving and, when that perch is full, run round, past me, and occupy the plinth on my side. Much laughing and calling and urging each other to jump in the water! But no one does.

It does look cool and inviting on this scorching afternoon. I’m tempted. But… Maybe another day!

(In his ‘Sticks in the Smoke’ project, Nick Andrew has been visiting, researching and drawing a different public park or garden in Central London since January 2016. This is leading to a collection of paintings exploring the theme of city green spaces from the perspective of a rural landscape painter. These will be shown in a London exhibition in 2018. www.nickandrew.co.uk

Battersea Park, Battersea, London SW11 4NJ
Open 8am – dusk
Google earth view here

Sticks in the Smoke 52: Brunswick Square Gardens, Bloomsbury

‘Peter Pan and the Foundlings’ (Thursday 16 March 2017)

The younger and smaller sister to Russell Square (see ‘Sticks in the Smoke’ 45), a short walk From Russell Square tube station. That same airy Bloomsbury morning feel under today’s blue skies. But as I enter at the western gate, eyes still muted from the gloom of Underground and shaded streets, I’m unprepared for the resonant vivid green bounce from the new spring grass which hits me and, for a moment, turns everything else to monochrome: hulking silhouettes of surrounding buildings; still winter-bare Oriental Planes, with their swollen-bellied trunks; and the rounding tarmac paths, crisscrossed with shadows, which circuit these 2 acre gardens.

With a line of natural springs, this piece of land was always well watered and ideal for grazing. Since Elizabethan times it was known as Lambs Conduit Fields, named after the benefactor, William Lambe, a gentleman of the Chapel Royal who, aware of the increasing problems of access to fresh water in 16th century London, funded the construction of a reservoir to feed a large lead pipe or conduit which carried the water into the City. He also paid for 120 pails to be given to poor women so they could earn a living by distributing the fresh water.

The fields were highly popular for sports and recreation and, in the early 1700s were used as a cricket ground for some of the first matches to be played in London.

I turn my back to the sun, following my purply shadow along the northern path. A man with a bright orange scarf is sitting on one of the benches, drinking coffee and throwing a ball for his yipping dog. Well tended beds and bountiful borders edge the park. A volunteer gardener is on her knees in the soil, armed with a trowel, headscarf tied around her hair (although Brunswick Square is maintained by Camden Council, volunteers from The Friends of Brunswick Square provide a little extra love and care into the planting and aim to encourage wildlife and biodiversity).

In the 1740s these fields were purchased for building the Foundling Hospital. Established by philanthropist Thomas Coram, who had been so moved by the frequent sight of abandoned infants on the squalid London streets, that he campaigned for and achieved a Royal charter to set up a children’s home. This was the ideal location (peaceful, fresh air, out of the City) and a large functional building was erected with dormitory wings and a central courtyard (built with bricks made on site from clay dug in nearby fields). This grew to became London’s most popular charity, supported by donations from wealthy benefactors. Artists such as Gainsborough, Joshua Reynolds and William Hogarth and composer Handel all gave money but also donated works to the Hospital’s collections, to enlighten the children and enrich their surroundings. It became one of London’s first public galleries.

Babies up to a year old were accepted (a basket was hung outside the gates for anonymous deliveries). Most would then be sent out to families in the countryside, paid for by the charity, to be raised until the age of 5. They then came back to live here and were eventually apprenticed out (at 14 for boys and 16 for girls) as servants, factory workers and a variety of other occupations.

On the eastern boundary of the park is a raised bank, ridged with a swathe of narcissi which seem to transmit their own citrussy light. I walk up amongst them taking photos. On a bench below, a workman has pulled his hi- vis hood over his head, like a giant daffodil closing its petals in on itself. On the other side of the fence is the Harmsworth Memorial Playground, where a lively football training session is being led by a passionately enthusiastic coach. That’s all part of Coram’s Fields: on the old Foundling Hospital footprint: seven acres devoted to the physical, mental and social wellbeing of children and young people (no adult can enter without being accompanied by someone under 16).

I walk across to the central hub of the park and set up my easel to draw. A circular fenced bed of shrubs and perennials and three snake bark acers brandish their angular branches, strikingly patterned as if birthday wrapped in exotic paper, colours changing from gold and blue grey in the sunshine to purple and ochre when the clouds close over. Workmen picnic on the grass. A constantly changing population of office workers, students and tourists on the park benches. While I’m drawing, the bench nearest to me has the following sequence of occupants:

3 girls in sports gear drinking coffee and chatting loudly and talking over each other.
2 guys with packed lunches. Much packet rustling but not a word passes between them. One’s smoking, the other bats away the clouds while trying to eat.
A bearded man in sunglasses and cycle helmet stretches his legs and smokes a cigar.
A pair of girls taking selfies and laughing. One of them has a laugh that sounds like she’s crying hysterically.
A man in a cap plugs himself into his phone, looks up to the warm spring sky, smiles and then nods rhythmically.

By the end of the 18th century, with the huge demands on its generous services, the governors of the Foundling Hospital decided to develop the surrounding estate to raise extra funds. Continuing the symmetry of the hospital and its grounds, two near- identical squares of elegant terraces were built, opening like wings on opposite flanks of the hospital grounds (Brunswick Square on the west and Mecklenburgh Square to the east). The square and the gardens were completed in by 1804 and named after Caroline of Brunswick, wife of the Prince Regent.

In Jane Austen‘s Emma, John Knightley and his family move into one of Brunswick Square’s townhouses. boasting: Our part of London is so very superior to most others. The neighbourhood of Brunswick Square is very different from almost all the rest. We are so remarkably airy!’

A blackbird lands in the flowerbed and hops amongst the shooting irises and twitches the yellow ring of his eye towards me before flapping under a shrub. A female appears and there’s much chittering and fluttering. I think I’m witnessing the start of a beautiful relationship.

052f — Oriental Planes and the Brunswick Centre

By the early 20th century, this once ‘airy’ piece of suburban London had been enveloped by smoky smoggy London. The governors of the Foundling Hospital considered it unhealthy for its young residents and in the 1920s it upped sticks and relocated to rural Surrey and then to purpose built premises in Hertfordshire (now Ashlyns School, Berkhamstead). There was a plan to transfer Covent Garden Market to the vacant site, but this was fought off by local residents. The original hospital building was eventually demolished. Over the years all the original Georgian houses around the square have been replaced: by UCL (University College London) buildings (the School of Pharmacy and International Hall of Residence) and, on the west side, the iconic Brunswick Centre built in the late 60s: Patrick Hodgkinson‘s modernist tiered apartment block, shopping and entertainment centre, with distinctive pairs of ventilation towers protruding ladderlike to the sky.

Thomas Coram‘s legacy still lives on here. The original charity has become the Thomas Coram Foundation for Children, structured as an umbrella group of charities working with vulnerable children in different areas. It has a headquarters and a children’s centre on the site of the original Hospital and also the Foundling Museum, where you can view the Hospital’s extensive Art collection (including Hogarth’s March of the Guards to Finchley and Gainsborough’s ‘The Charterhouse’) in recreations of beautiful eighteenth-century interiors from the original Hospital building.

A coffee at the Foundling Museum cafe then out into the afternoon sunshine. Now a slight chill in the air. The statue of Thomas Coram smiles beneficently from his plinth. A man whirrs past on his mobility scooter. Closely followed by his elderly 3 legged spaniel which hobbles along and keeps having to sit down in the path. I notice that all three of them (Thomas Coram, the scooter man, and the dog) have virtually identical hairstyles.

Some magnificent trees in this park. But stretching over the south west quarter is the second oldest plane tree in London: The Brunswick Plane. I make my way over to its trunk and run my hands around its knobbly crocodile bark. I sense its roots coursing and pushing down, through the centuries, the same soil compressed by the feet of modern Londoners, medieval villagers, livestock and Anglo Saxon travellers. I set up to make a drawing of the tree with the square shouldered Brunswick Centre in the background (see drawing below). Branches spread out appearing to defy gravity, this closest one quivers as though the tree is breathing. It twists with the great gnarled elbows and the bubonic biceps of some great beast.

When he first arrived in London, the young writer J M Barrie lived in cheap lodgings just over to my left, on the south west corner of the square (a blue plaque marks the site). In Peter Pan, he based the Darlings’ home here and, when writing stage directions for the play, specified that Peter and Wendy would fly out of the window and over the treetops of Brunswick Square.

I look up and imagine them momentarily perched and swaying on those highest twig tips, stars above them flickering like fireflies.

Brunswick Square Gardens, Bloomsbury, London WC1N 1AZ
Open daylight hours
Google earth view here