Honouring pioneer gardener Fanny Wilkinson in Red Lion Square

She blazed a trail for women and created a remarkable array of green public spaces for London

This article also appears at OnLondon.co.uk, my multi-contributor journalism website about the UK capital which paid subscribers to this personal Substack help support.

Fanny Wilkinson was born near Manchester in 1855, but by the end of 1883 she was a graduate of the Crystal Palace School of Landscape Gardening and Practical Horticulture and all set to make her many indelible marks on London’s built environment. She was also one of the city’s less sensational but perhaps most significant women’s rights pioneers of that time.

Among Wilkinson’s numerous achievements was designing the gardens of Red Lion Square. That London location, close to Holborn station, where Holborn itself and Bloomsbury meet, has been notable for an array of reasons ever since its creation in 1684 by the buccaneering property developer (among other things) Nicholas Barbon, eldest son of hellfire parliamentarian Praise-God Barbon – yes, that’s Praise-God Barbon). Before proceeding, Barbon and his workforce had to see off a reported 100-plus, brick-throwing local lawyers who feared their “wholesome air” would be polluted by his latest venture.

Other Red Lion Square claims to fame include providing the main entrance to Conway Hall, HQ since it opened in 1929 of the Conway Hall Ethical Society – an ironic association given some of Barbon’s business methods. Before that, it allegedly accommodated the disinterred remains of Oliver Cromwell and, much later, in 1974, the square was the scene of a fight between National Front supporters and anti-fascist groups at which a student protester died. Wilkinson’s contribution to Red Lion Square’s history has been one of its more tranquil and, along with her wider influence on the capital, more lasting and transformative than most.

Landscape gardening was so dominated by men in her era that she was the only woman on her Crystal Palace course. Yet after completing it she was very quickly elected an honorary gardener to the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association, a charity (which still exists) devoted to the provision of new public spaces, and soon after employed on a professional basis, making her the first woman in England to attain that status.

In all, Wilkinson was the force behind at least 75 public gardens of various sizes in various parts of London, including Goldsmith Square in Hackney, Myatt’s Fields Park in Camberwell, Paddington Street Gardens in Marylebone, Meath Gardens in Bethnal Green, the churchyard of St John’s church (now Smith Square Hall) in Smith Square, Westminster and the garden of St Luke’s church in Chelsea.

She was also commissioned to design Vauxhall Park, which open in 1890, the culmination of a campaign by suffragist Millicent Fawcett, social reformer Octavia Hill and others. Fawcett and her sisters became good friends of Wilkinson, whose former home in Bloomsbury is marked by a blue plaque beside the recently-created Princes Circus, a new piece of public realm in the space between New Oxford Street and Shaftesbury Avenue.

I was pleased to be invited to a gathering that took place yesterday morning in Red Lion Square, organised by the Friends of Red Lion Square Gardens. The occasion was the unveiling by local resident and distinguished actor Tim McInnerny of a memorial stone in honour of Wilkinson.

I had known little about her until I embarked on my interviews for the latest London Society podcast. Sarah Wood, chair of the Friends of St John’s Garden in Clerkenwell, enthused about her and her influence on spaces such as the garden. Another of my interviewees was Patricia Wager, interim chair of the Friends of Red Lion Square Gardens, and this provided an opportunity for me to mention Wilkinson in my script.

McInnerny, Wager (both pictured above) and local author and campaigner Elizabeth Crawford all said a few words as bubbly was sipped in the autumn sunshine. It was a pleasing occasion in honour of a remarkable woman and Londoner.

Listen to the London Society podcast, mentioning Fanny Wilkinson, featuring Patricia Wager and Sarah Wood, and funded by the Central District Alliance BID, HERE.