Memorial (lost): Friends’ Meeting House - Hammersmith
This garden is on the site of the Friends’ Meeting House and Burial Ground, 1765-1944.
Looks like something used to be mounted on the granite top of this pillar, but what? This memorial was probably erected in 1951 when the bomb site was cleared for the Festival of Britain celebrations.
Site: Friends’ Meeting House - Hammersmith (2 memorials)
W6, Furnivall Gardens
The tree-less plaque is in the lawn some distance to the right, outside our photo, which was taken from inside the garden.
Concerning Furnivall Gardens generally, a nearby information board informs: "The gardens are named after Dr Frederick James Furnivall, 1825 - 1910, a distinguished scholar of English literature and an important figure in the development of the sport of rowing. In 1896 he founded the Hammersmith Sculling Club for Girls and Men, now called the Furnivall Sculling Club, whose premises are in Lower Mall.
Furnivall Gardens cover the area which was formerly the mouth of the Hammersmith creek, an outlet into the Thames from Stamford Brook. In 1936 after the decline of the fishing industry in the creek harbour in the early 19th century, the creek was filled in and the water channelled through an underground culvert.
Many of the buildings in the creek area were destroyed by bombing during World War II and, in 1948, the council created an open space in this area, to be used during the Festival of Britain. A walled garden was constructed on the bombed site of what had, since 1765, been the Friends' Meeting House and burial ground.
Furnivall Gardens and Hammersmith Pier were opened on 5th May 1951."
The pier was built as a dock where festival-visitors could board a ferry to the Battersea and the South Bank.
The 1954 film Impulse has a scene at about 44 minutes where the characters arrive at Dove Pier and walk across Furnival Gardens. The camera briefly shows some of the large buildings on the other side of the Great West Road, and before that a windowed ruined wall which seems to stretch northwards from what is now River House, across the Gardens to the Great West Road.
