Pam Cooper in Waterlow Park

Sir Sydney’s garden for the gardenless

Garden historian Pam Cooper traces the history of a great gift to Londoners, writes Dan Carrier


Waterlow Park, A Garden for the Gardenless, by Pam Cooper, Chico Publications, £12.99, available from Highgate Bookshop, Owl Bookshop and Landerdale house. order this book

THE party was a knees-up fit for the newly crowned king. Scantily clad satyrs danced around a fountain that had been plumbed to gush forth jets of red wine, while actors performed a play based on Greek mythology by the renowned Ben Jonson.
It was May Day, 1604, and in attendance in the Highgate garden of Sir William Cornwallis was King James the First and his queen, Anne of Denmark.
The area had developed a reputation as having gardens that were used for leisure. Situated on a hill away from the hustle and bustle of old London, it had become a magnet for the well-heeled who built fine homes and gardens and enjoyed the use of five pubs.
Their gardens were no longer simply used for growing fruit and vegetables – they were becoming a status symbol for the great and good in late Tudor and early Stuart times.
And the remnants of this fad for landscaped gardens can be seen today in the shape of Waterlow Park.
In a new book which charts its history, a wonderful story of a selfless gift to the people of Camden is revealed.
Garden historian Pam Cooper, who lives in Swain’s Lane, Highgate, a short walk from the park, was the chairwoman of the Friends of Waterlow Park.
She chose her local park as the subject for a thesis and her final paper became, unintentionally, a key document in the battle to return the park to its former glory. It was used by Camden Council as part of its bid to the Lottery Heritage Fund to win £1.5 million to renovate and restore the space.
And now her history of Waterlow Park, complete with lavish pictures, illustrations and maps, is on sale.
“I had always enjoyed walking in the park, but it was becoming very run down,” she says. So she began scouring local archives, libraries, maps and historical documents to form a picture of how Waterlow Park came to exist.
In 1856 Sir Sydney Waterlow moved his wife and family to Highgate. He was a director of Waterlow and Sons, a printing and stationary company established by Sir Sydney’s father James. They won a contract to provide stationary for railways and this made the Waterlow family wealthy.
But for Sir Sydney, with wealth came responsibility. Having money primarily did not mean luxury for himself and his large family, it was an opportunity to improve the lot of his fellow Londoner.
He was a Unitarian, and became fascinated with projects to provide clean water and good housing for working-class people.
Sir Sydney was also interested in medicine. He helped with the building of the St Pancras Infirmary, and when it opened in 1869, Florence Nightingale advised him on how to train nurses.
Waterlow’s nurturing character stretched to his grounds.
He put up cedar-framed glass houses to grow fruit and grapes, and employed gardeners whose love for the area is apparent.
They also laid out kitchen gardens, on top of the ones that had previously been there in the 17th and 18th centuries, but larger. “All this food-growing capacity must have been necessary for the large Waterlow household,” says Mrs Cooper.
“By 1871 there were 16 servants on top of the family living there already.”
Sir Sydney decided in 1872 to hand over Lauderdale House to St Bartholomew’s as a convalescent home. Then in 1889, Sir Sydney gave the garden over to London County Council. The story of the generous gift is well known. His statue in the park, complete with umbrella, surveys “the garden for the gardenless” he handed over to Londoners.
But Mrs Cooper’s book reveals an important earlier history. One of the reasons the park is so well landscaped was because of a former tenant, James Penneforne, an architect, who in 1842, moved into Elm Court, originally part of the outbuildings of Lauderdale House.
He had been brought up by Regency architect John Nash, and there was much speculation that he was the product of an affair between Nash’s wife and the Prince Regent (later George IV).
Penneforne landscaped much of the land and was also responsible for the winding coach path that snakes from the Swain’s Lane entrance up the hill- still one of the main pathways through Waterlow.
Penneforne was Nash’s assistant and worked on many schemes that have shaped modern central London.
These include laying out Regent’s Park, working on Carlton, a ballroom for Buckingham Palace and all of New Oxford street.
He was also the architect who moved Marble Arch from the palace’s entrance to its present position, as it proved to be too small for coaches to pass through.
He worked on the two Gothic gatehouses at both main entrances. They have a Nash-like quality about them, similar to buildings in Park Village East.
The 20th century saw the park gradually decline as funds for maintenance were squeezed.
During World War II parts of the park reverted to its previous use of growing vegetables.
Unlike on Primrose and Parliament Hills, anti-aircraft guns were not placed on the summits of Waterlow Park, so it was not a natural target.
However, an air raid shelter was sunk beneath the tennis courts and one walker was resting on bench beside these when a bomb landed near her.
She was luckily unscathed, but her hat was blown off her head.
In gentler times poet, writer and political commentator Andrew Marvell lived in a cottage on Highgate Hill in the 1660s and had access to what is now the park.
Mrs Cooper suggests the gardens could have inspired his works. He wrote: “I have a garden of my own, but so with roses overgrown, and lilies, that you would it guess, to be a little wilderness.”
And Waterlow Park, like Marvell’s works, with its landscaped slopes that have been tended for more than 500 years, illustrates the relationship between people and their natural environment.