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atlinmerrick:

Postman’s Park

This is a strange, bitter-sweet, easy-to-miss park in London but it is wonderfully well worth visiting. I think John and Sherlock know this place. I think the first time John went there he felt like he’d found something precious, because indeed he had.

Postman’s Park is tiny, just a small space quite near the Old Bailey, where the boys are sometimes expert witnesses in criminal trials, it is also close to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, St. Paul’s Cathedral, the Barbican, and almost right next to the Museum of London.

The park often sees city workers taking their lunch on the benches there, but it is never really a busy place, so it’s easy to take your time and to see what it is that makes this place so special. And that is this:

It contains The Watts Memorial to Heroic Self Sacrifice.

This memorial is a wall of plaques remembering women, men, and children who gave their lives to save others. Many of the people are siblings who died saving a sister or a brother, or young people who put themselves in harm’s way so another would live and in that act they themselves died.

For example, there is this plaque:

Elizabeth Boxall
Aged 17 of Bethnal Green
Who Died of Injuries Received
In Trying to Save
A Child
From a Runaway Horse
June 20 1888

That’s the one I think which saddens John the most. For Sherlock it’s the plaque to Henry James Bristow, an eight-year-old boy, who in 1890 saved his little sister’s life by removing her flaming clothes but himself caught fire. Oh but there are more plaques to solemnly see, including Alice Ayres who, in 1885, saved three children from a burning building at the cost “of her own young life,” there’s a plaque for Frederick Alfred Croft, a 31-year-old inspector who, in 1878, saved a woman from being hit by a train but himself was run over. There are several dozen more.

This wee park is surrounded by other buildings, so it feels sort of tucked away, still, and quiet. In the park there’s a tiny fountain in the middle of a little pond with goldfish in it. Anomalously there’s also a half dozen banana trees and, dotted behind them and at the edges of the park—which used to be a graveyard—are headstones.

Though it’s a bit of a solemn place, do make a point of seeing it if you can. It’s lovely and worth a bit of time so that you can appreciate that sometimes people do extraordinary things for each other.

Of course John and Sherlock know this firsthand for they would give their lives one for the other. Whether they think so or not they are, in their own ways, heroic. We all have that potential.

As always, I suggest reading the comments of this series on AO3, as people often provide lovely information that can help you fashion your fics. Also, here is ‘Unsung’ 221b_hound’s lovely wee story about the park. And, as always, please let me know about a place in London you’d like me to cover. I return to the US at the end of October, so get those requests in soon. I love doing these and sharing the city we love, so please ask questions. I’ll take lots of photos and still post entries even after I get back to the States. Thank you! NOTE: In the comments Kostia suggests downloading the app for the park. “The app is designed to show you more information when you’re actually at the park and pointing your camera at the tablets, but you can skip that part and look at every single tablet and read about every single hero. I love it.”