Tagged: actor
Green Squares and Secret Gardens
31 Jul 2021
At the end of July I went to have a look around some of the private gardens opened up by the annual Green Squares and Secret Gardens event. Sadly it was compressed into a single day this year, for various Covid-related reasons, it seems, so I didn't get to poke around too many places. I went to:
- A talk by the oldest resident of Victoria Square
- The St Vincent's Rocks Hotel garden
- The Paragon garden
- Cornwallis Crescent gardens, both east and west
- The Polygon garden
And snapped a few things in between, too. It was a lovely day—a bit too hot, if anything—and it was interesting to get into a few places I'd only ever seen from the outside, especially The Paragon and Cornwallis gardens, which are the least visible to passing strangers of all of them.
Kicked off my Clifton "secret gardens" visit by attending a talk by Victoria Square's "oldest resident", who is 95 and has lived there all his life. He did mention his family name in passing, but I've got a memory like a sieve, and his name's not on the event details. Ah well.
He really brought the square to life, with memories of the children playing in the square, making their way between the two halves using the tunnel—which I learned also had enough room to store the gardener's equipment, so must have been bigger than I thought!—and with the oldest child having a garden key hanging around their neck on a bit of string, ready to use when each family used a distinctive sound—anything from a whistle to a cowbell—to call the kids back home. He also touched on delivery men, including horsedrawn milk carts that would fill maids' jusgs from their churns, and the Walls ice cream boy who would visit houses who had hung the distinctive "W" sign in their windows on a Sunday, and gave many other amazing details. I really wish I'd recorded the event.
Among other new tidbits I can recall:
- Number 4 was blown to smithereens during WWII, hit so badly by a German bomb that bodies were blown into Mortimer Road. Grim.
- The "pinch point" made by the railings below the Arch House were motivated by a battle between the residents, and the Council and Merchant Venturers (who basically built/owned the Square, hence the adjacent Merchants Road) over a road that was planned to run diagonally through the square (as actually happened with Queen Square). The pinch point was constructed to preserve the maximum width of the existing right of way through the corner, making it too narrow for cars.
- The Victora Square Hotel used to be the vicarage for St Andrew's Church. Our Oldest Resident attended Sunday School there.
- The old [Church/Church Hall](htt