Our new series Lunchtime Tourism tells you all about the places you can visit in the Square Mile on your lunch break. Think you have a better option? Our Toast the City awards are celebrating the green spaces and hidden gems (and much, much more) that make the City great and we want YOU to nominate your favourites. Go to the nominations page here.
Bumble bees are one of 170 London bee species that do not live in hives. Only the honeybee does. Instead, solitary City bees look for quiet temporary homes. One like the boutique Bee Hotel in the Goldsmith’s Garden on Gresham Street.
This hotel is made of bamboo sticks and moss because most bees hate hives. They ignore Bee Benidorm and seek classier locations to nest and lay eggs. If you are thinking of whacking a hive on your office roof, think again.
There is much more to admire in one of the City’s finest pocket parks. You enter opposite Goldsmith’s Hall, under an iron arch. Above you shimmers a leopard’s head, the symbol of the 700-year-old Goldsmiths opposite. The Goldsmiths maintain this garden, and with it their ancient church and part of their wonderful story.
This leopard is the world’s first brand. Known in medieval times as the King’s mark, the leopard is about quality assurance. Introduced in 1300 by King Edward I, it indicates the purity of precious metal. The ‘mark’ was made in the Goldsmith’s ‘hall’. So the quality assurance became a ‘Hallmark’ – from where we get the term today.
The King’s Mark, incidentally, was so called because of England’s coat of arms, adopted a century before by Richard the Lionheart. In heraldic terms the Three Lions worn by the Lionesses are actually leopards. Only a rampant Lion (standing up, like in Scotland’s case) counts as an heraldic Lion. But we digress.
Walk up the steps and into what was a churchyard back in 1181. The gardens are raised by centuries of death, but the resultant park is a living delight. Huge London plane trees, centuries old, lean forward as if to protect their precious environment. Walk round them, and down the far steps in front of Lloyds Bank to the sunken garden. Readers of past Lunchtime Tourism columns will know that City streets rise by about a foot a century: here you are now at street level Gresham Street 1666, the year the Great Fire razed this and 86 other City churches.
The gardeners’ door to the right has an Honours Board for a garden that regularly tops award lists. Look around for bat roosts, a bird bath fountain provided by the Construction Company, and, in the Northeast Corner, our Bee Hotel, waiting for its upscale solitary nesters to come home for the evening.
In the Southeast corner is a relic of the City’s past (and City AM’s) heritage: the “Three Printers” statue by Wilfred Dudeney, which depicts a newsboy, a printer, and an editor, was originally commissioned by Westminster Press but relocated after redevelopment
For the Lunchtime Tourist, it is a lot to take in. Whether inspired for the Lionesses, by the gardens, or the fate of our solitary pollinators, this golden pocket garden is the bees’ knees.