Erection date: /10/1900
{On a bronze plaque:}
This drinking fountain has been erected by the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association, 83 Lancaster Gate, W, at the sole cost of J. Passmore Edwards, Esq., it being the desire of the donor to thereby add to the enjoyment of those using this churchyard which the Association has laid out as a public garden.
October 1900
The Christ Church fountain is one of several drinking fountains that Edwards funded through the Metropolitan Drinking fountain and Cattle Trough Association, now the Drinking fountain Association. Another exists in the park behind the former Hoxton library, which was also funded by Edwards.
2024: Southwark News reported: "An Edwardian drinking fountain in Blackfriars is set to be restored, supplying Londoners with fresh water after running dry for years. ... The Christchurch fountain is subsiding due to its dilapidated granite base and the water has not run since 2019. Southwark Council plans to dismantle the structure, replacing damaged parts, before returning the intact fountain."
Site: Christ Church, Southwark (2 memorials)
SE1, Blackfriars Road, Christ Church
From the church's modern information board: "Christ Church Garden is the remains of the much larger medieval Paris Garden mentioned in William Shakespeare's play Henry VIII. The present parish boundary largely follows the line of the Paris Garden. The street called Broadwall separated the Garden from Lambeth Marsh to the west and the street Paris Garden itself recalls the origins of the site.
The first church was erected in 1671 but began to sink into the boggy ground and had to be rebuilt in 1738. The last burial was in 1856 as the churchyard was full. In 1895 some coffins had been damaged by flooding and 650 bodies were removed from the churchyard and vaults and reburied at Brookwood Cemetery in Surrey. In 1900 The Metropolitan Public Gardens Association created a new garden from the cleared churchyard as a public amenity and placed it under the care of the local authority.
... Writers Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley ... and the Rennie family of railway and bridge engineers were parishioners and the church was known to Charles Dickens.
The present building dates from 1959 and replaces the second church which was severely damaged by enemy action on 17 April 1941. The stone cross in the grass behind the church marks where the tower's cross fell and was listed in the National Register of War Memorials in 2003."
