If you want to escape one of London’s busiest areas, look no further than the hidden oasis of Red Cross Garden. Less than 10 minutes’ walk from London Bridge, the award-winning park promises peace and nature.
The Red Cross Garden, located in Southwark, is an open space with a Victorian design. Octavia Hill was the woman behind the hidden garden which was created in 1886.
As well as creating the garden, she was a social reformer, one of the three founders of the National Trust and a member of the Army Cadets. The modern Army Cadets force was established in Southwark, as was the garden, in 1889. The Red Cross Garden was part of a flagship project to improve housing for poor people and create jobs for urban workers, and the park was a way of providing pleasant green spaces for the inhabitants.
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Before the garden was built, the land where the garden now stands was used as a burial ground. In 1762 land was leased by the Society of Friends, or the Quakers, where they built a meeting house. The burial ground was closed in 1792 and the parish houses were used until 1860.
Most of the garden’s layout was lost to municipal grass and asphalt and was used during the 1940s. Sixty years later, it reopened in 2006 when the garden received funding from Southwark Council and the National Lottery’s Heritage Trust Fund. In the garden there is a pond where you can find dragonflies, frogs, toads and newts. You can also find a mosaic installed after the Red Cross Garden was restored.
There are volunteers in the garden who are willing to give tours of its history along with holding leisure clubs, poetry readings, celebrations and other events. If you want to find a place to relax with friends and family, have a picnic or just appreciate nature, the Red Cross Garden is the place to be.
How to get there
You will find the entrance to the Red Cross Garden on Redcross Way, just off Union Street. To get there from London Bridge Station, walk along St Thomas Street, turn left onto the A3 and follow that road until you see Union Street on the right. It is then the first on the left as you walk along Union Street.
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