London’s Pocket Parks: Wilmington Square Garden, WC1

This is a large public garden square near Islington’s Spa Fields that has never been built on. The whole area around it was still fields in 1800, but just a couple of decades later, the local streets were laid out, with Wilmington Square in the centre.

The developer was John Wilson, a property developer who had already been responsible for Gray’s Inn Road and Doughty Street (where Charles Dickens later lived).

In 1817, he took a lease on the farm land from the Marquess of Northampton to build houses in the area. The development took longer than planned though, and had barely started by 1824. Also, the central garden was initially planned to be larger, but the area proved more challenging to sell the grand houses the developer wanted, so he had to provide smaller, cheaper properties.

The antiquary Thomas Cromwell noted in 1828 that, presumably for financial reasons, the square was “completed in a form more circumscribed than was at first determined on, and with houses of a less lofty character”

The houses and the central garden took their name from the landlord the Marquess of Northampton, who had been granted the subsidiary title of Baron Wilmington in 1812 – hence Wilmington Square.

Most garden squares of the era were built with a road all the way around, but  Wilmington Square was built with the houses on the north side facing directly onto the garden. That wasn’t planned but an accident caused by the slow pace of building the homes. By the time the developer got around to building the north row of houses, another developer had grabbed the land to the north of the square, built their own row of houses there, and created Margery Street.

As a result, the houses facing Wilmington Square Garden had to be built on the road that was planned to go in front of them. Whoops!

It does mean they have their own private path and face right onto the gardens instead of a road, so it probably worked out better in the long run.

The garden was originally private for the local residents, but in July 1885, the Marquess granted a lease to the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association on a pepercorn rent so they could open the gardens for the public. A now very run-down former drinking fountain in the garden has a very faded sign on it commemorating the opening of the gardens for the public.

The gardens were relaid in 1900-01, when it seems that hollows left from the soil excavation to build the houses was filled in to create a level lawn. The shelter in the middle of the garden was added in 1931.

Today, the garden is managed by Islington Council and mainly consists of a rather shabby lawn in the centre surrounded by a wide variety of ornamental and traditional trees. As an old garden square, many of the trees show their age, which gives the park a sense of gravitas that younger parks with small trees tend to lack.

On my viist, a fitness group was using the park in the shelter and several people out for a morning dog walk.