Trip to the Big Smoke 1

Went down to London for the day on Friday with a friend. We both wanted to see Postmans Park after having read about it in Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger. It's a memorial in a little park, surrounded by office blocks and flats just around the corner from St Pauls Cathedral. It's a tranquil little oasis which used to be used by the workers of the GPO, (General Post Office) when it was next door, hence it's name. Reading up on it, it used to be a graveyard where instead of burying the bodies they just put soil over them, hence there are mounds in the park that are higher than the surrounding land. There are no bodies there now, and all the gravestones line the edges of the park.

The memorial is in the form of tiles, for unsung heroes, ordinary men and women who in saving someone else have lost their own lifes. It was really quite moving. So many of the heroes were children. There were lots of jobs that are not done anymore and some wording that is just not used anymore. It's well worth a visit if you ever get to London.


The man behind the memorial, George Frederick Watts, was also involved with our next port of call - Leighton House. Now a musuem, Leighton House was the home to Lord Leighton, a pre-raphelite painter, as was G F Watts and one of his paintings was hanging in the house, but more of my travels in another post