A wintry walking tour through Bermondsey’s Guy Street Park and Leathermarket Gardens

Grave robbers, tanneries and magnificent roses - historian Debra Gosling takes us on a history walk through these hidden green gems...

Pheeuuwww...here it is, January. All the glitter and tinsel is put away, the last of the Roses have been scoffed and you're feeling rather overblown and unnecessary. New Year Resolutions? In the middle of winter? Not on your Nelly, mate.

But how to blow the Christmas cobwebs off and break out of that brandy fug? Come with me, let me entice you away from all the good intentions and show you the green spaces and the history you can experience right now. Come along, come along, on a cold winter's day, away from the central heating and the stale office gossip. Wrap up! Bring a flask of soup! Breathe in the air! Let's go for a walk!

We only have a few hours of daylight so make the most of it. Let's go to the park - Guy Street Park, in the spooky shadow of Guy's Hospital. If you want to get a sense of old ghosts this is the place. Notice how high the railings are surrounding this park - they look dark and funereal because this was once a burial ground for the patients of Guy's Hospital.

Beforehand the land had been a tenter ground, a place where newly-made fabric was hooked onto frames (tenters) and stretched tightly to dry and flatten it. The phrase ‘on tenter hooks’, meaning to feel anxious, and the word 'tent' originate from this practice. In this vicinity it was the tanners that used the ground to dry hides. But then Guy's Hospital bought the land...

Tenter hooks at Guy Street. Copyright Bevingtons 2010

Until 1855 the hospital authorities used the burial-ground for its poorer patients. A pauper's grave with no ceremony. In the early nineteenth century the dreaded 'bodysnatchers' raided it in the dead of night to retrieve cadavers for medical students. In fact, it was such big business that there are probably only a few people still lying beneath.

Ben Crouch, the son of a Guy's Hospital carpenter, was leader of The Borough Gang, a notorious mob of grave robbers. The surgeons were no better than their employees - once they had finished picking bits off corpses they threw what remained into the drains. Such contempt and disrespect for those poor people. Is it any wonder visitors exclaimed that Bermondsey smelt? This awful crime was stopped with the Burial Act of 1832 and the land repurposed as builder’s yard.

A Guy's bodysnatcher

Victorian Bermondsey was cramped and congested with housing and factories. An open space was required for people to get some much needed air and sunshine. The Nelson Recreation Ground, as Guy Street Park was previously known, addressed this need.

It opened on 30th March 1899 to great acclaim. There was a children's gymnasium, flower beds, seating and Sunday band concerts. Recently the Friends of Guy Street Park got down to planting 750 spring bulbs so that will be a sight for sore eyes soon. Perhaps those below will push up a few daisies too!

Now, is it time to have our soup? Let's cross Weston Street and head to Leathermarket Gardens, a more recent green asset to this lovely area. Walk through to the rose garden and find a bench. But before you do, search for the old manhole cover which says Borough of Bermondsey, an old relic from another time.

For centuries, this part of Bermondsey was dominated by the leather industry, where malodorous deep tan pits, animal carcasses and smoking chimneys neighboured residential properties. These gardens are on the site of a tannery which was destroyed in World War Two, along with many more in the area.

The bombsites are gone; from trauma and darkness has emerged birdsong and beauty. Sadly at this time of year there are few roses to admire and sniff. But this park has more than a touch of magic - see all the busy little birds in the bushes. There are sparrows here - they used to be everywhere but suddenly disappeared from London. There has been a programme to reintroduce our 'cockney sparrers' - and they are happily thriving here.

A rose in Leathermarket Gardens (c) Debra Gosling

Like I say, this was a bombsite. With peace restored, the derelict site, managed by the London County Council, was laid out as public gardens and opened on a cold January day in 1958. The magnificent roses (in June!) in the formal garden were provided by the LCC from their nursery at Avery Hill in Eltham. The park was extended to Weston Street in the 1980s, when the remaining wartime rubble was cleared away.

The Shard dominates the park’s skyline. The architect was Renzo Piano, who created this most fabulous building. It opened to the public in 2013. Special white glass had to be invented to clad the frame and ensure its reflections are always different. Two scale models were constructed in Europe to test this, one of which was dangled from a high crane and rotated to ensure the desired effect was achieved. It's London's kaleidoscope.

The Shard, (c) Debra Gosling

Well, almost time to leave our wintery Paradise but as you walk out of the gate into Leathermarket Street you will find the old blacksmith’s shop, now a garage. The smithy was established in the early 1840s, when the street was just fields.

Leathermarket forge (c) Southwark Libraries

The original farrier (horse veterinarian) lived upstairs in the premises. The iron rings, where the horses were tethered whilst being shoed, remain. The façade, adorned with horse head sculptures, dates from 1890.