Garden Museum - St Mary's at Lambeth

St Mary's At Lambeth

The Garden Museum is housed in the medieval and Victorian church of St Mary’s at Lambeth. The first church on the site was built before the Norman Conquest, and was integral to the religious centre established by the Archbishops of Canterbury in the twelfth century. The structure was deconsecrated in 1972 and rescued from demolition by the founder of the Museum, Rosemary Nicholson. The structure of the church was repaired, holding small exhibitions such as The Tradescant Story from 1979. The Museum opened in 1977 as the world’s first museum of garden history; the churchyard was re-designed as a garden.

The church is the oldest structure in the Borough of Lambeth, except for the crypt of Lambeth Palace itself, and its burials and monuments are a record of 950 years of a community. But for the Palace, it has perhaps the richest historical story of any building in the borough.

In 1062 a wooden church was built on the site by Goda, sister of Edward the Confessor; the Domesday Book records 29 tenancies in her manor. Later in the century it was rebuilt as a stone church and appears to have been at its height of splendour and patronage in the twelfth century, when it functioned as the church to the Archbishop’s London lodgings next door.

In 1377 the stone tower was built; it was repaired in 1834 – 35 but is otherwise intact. The body of the church was continually rebuilt and enriched over the centuries but, decisively, in 1851 – 2 the aisles and nave were rebuilt by Philip Charles Hardwick (1822 – 92), an architect prominent in the construction of banks and railway stations but not considered to be in the “first rank” of his generation; it was his father, Sir Philip Hardwick, who designed the Euston Arch. It is described by Museum of London Archaeology Service “as an almost complete rebuilding of the old body of the church”. The most eye-catching survivals are four of eight corbels in the ceiling of the nave. These are a mix of medieval and Victorian construction.

One of the few twentieth-century interventions took place circa 1900 with the insertion of an immersion font, said to be one of only two examples in Anglican churches in England, and a baptistery at the base of the Tower

In the Second World War the stained glass was badly damaged by bombs, and in the 1950s the stained glass was replaced by either plain glass or panels by Francis Stephens (1921–2002), including a replica of the “Pedlar’s Window”. The bombs also broke up the altar donated in 1888 by Sir Henry Doulton as a memorial to his wife; Doulton’s ceramic factory stood about 300 metres to the south.

In 1972 the church was made redundant in consequence of its dilapidation and gloom, and also because of changes in the population settlement of the parish: the area by the riverside had become derelict and under-populated, and the Vicar wanted a church closer to where the congregation lived. In 1969 Lambeth Council designated the area around Lambeth Palace as one of the borough’s first conservation areas.

Soon after the Church Commissioners obtained the necessary consents for demolition; the altar, bells, and pews were removed. In 1976 Rosemary Nicholson visited the site to see the tomb of John Tradescant and was shocked to discover the church boarded-up in readiness for its demolition. She established the Tradescant Trust, which was awarded a 99-year lease from the Diocese of Southwark, who continue to own the land. The Trust’s rescue and repair of the structure became one of the great architectural conservation causes of its time, and the church started its journey as a Museum.