Postman’s Park is one of those hidden gems, a small park connecting two busy main roads – St Martin’s Le Grand and King Edward Street – which many people walk straight past. To be fair, it does appear at first glance to be the churchyard of St Botolph’s Without Aldersgate (which it indeed once was) but it is now a City Park, maintained by the Corporation of London.
The graveyard of St Botolph’s was closed following the 1851 Burials Act, which prohibited any new burials in the old City churchyards, in an attempt to combat repeated outbreaks of cholera, and in 1858 it was decided that the churchyard would be converted into a public park, incorporating the adjacent burial grounds of Christ Church Greyfriars and St Leonard, Foster Lane. It took many years to clear these burial grounds, and the park did not open until 1880. Being situated right next to the General Post Office, the park was frequented by postal workers during their breaks, and so this inevitably became known as Postman’s Park.
In 1887 George Frederick Watts, a prominent artist, wrote to The Times suggesting a project to mark Queen Victoria’s Jubilee that year, which would celebrate people who had given their own lives whilst trying to save others. His idea was not taken up, and so he decided to create a memorial himself – the GF Watts Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice – which was located in Postman’s Park. The memorial takes the form of an open gallery with room for 120 painted ceramic plaques. There are 46 plaques in place, each recording an act of heroic self-sacrifice.
Probably the most famous plaque is for Alice Ayres: “Daughter of a bricklayer’s labourer who by intrepid conduct saved 3 children from a burning house in Union Street Borough at the cost of her own young life April 24, 1885”. In 1936 the local council renamed White Cross Street (off Union Street) after her, and the 1997 play called Closer featured a woman who assumed the identity of Alice. A Hollywood film based on the play was released in 2004, starring Natalie Portman, Julia Roberts, Jude Law and Clive Owen, featuring the Postman’s Park and the GF Watts Memorial.
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