History
It was created during the 1870s by Joseph Bazalgette, and was part of a project for the Metropolitan Board of Works to provide London with a modern sewerage system.
The gardens were later expanded. This expansion was discussed in parliament in 1898 in the 'Victoria Embankment extension and St John's improvement bill'. A number of wharves were subsequently compulsorily purchased, including Dorset Wharf (shown on 1885 map) which was purchased from George Taverner Miller, son of Taverner John Miller, from where he ran a 'Sperm Oil Merchants and Spermaceti refining' business. The effects from this business and others were sold in 1905.
Read more about this topic: Victoria Tower Gardens
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“What would we not give for some great poem to read now, which would be in harmony with the scenery,—for if men read aright, methinks they would never read anything but poems. No history nor philosophy can supply their place.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)
“The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present. History is a hill or high point of vantage, from which alone men see the town in which they live or the age in which they are living.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)