The History of
When the Company purchased Thomas Cromwell’s mansion from King Henry VIII in 1543, extensive gardens stretched to the north and west. The great garden, as it was called, is now filled by the modern building known as Drapers’ Gardens, but in 1543 was planted with rose bushes, gooseberry bushes, gourds, strawberries and herbs. A bowling alley, a maze and summerhouses added to its attraction and the Drapers opened it to the public.
The garden remained a welcome oasis in the City until Throgmorton Avenue was constructed in 1874. The Avenue sliced through the east side of the garden, prompting the Company to let the garden to eager property developers.
The great garden was thus sacrificed to the demands of the commercial City but the upper garden, close to Drapers’ Hall, was retained and entirely redesigned in 1928 with central planters and a pond. Whilst no doubt fitting the bill at the time, this formal format did not lend itself to the Company’s tradition of entertaining in the garden and hindered the gathering of any significant numbers. Our 650th anniversary was a welcome opportunity to remedy this and Hannah Gladstone (a graduate from Capel Manor College) was commissioned to design a new garden, opened by the Master in April 2016.
Since then, the linear layout has been softened, more space for gatherings and step-free access from the Avenue have been created and the planting scheme entirely renewed, all whilst preserving the garden’s historic and serene atmosphere.
Today, mulberry trees and a magnificent magnolia dominate the garden and Cromwell would be pleased that we continue to have fruit bearing trees, herbs, roses and flowering plants, providing colour (with an emphasis on azure and gold from the Company’s coat of arms), scents and interest.
A lead statue fountain, presented by Clerk, Sir Ernest Pooley, in 1928 provides a water feature. The north gate and wall railings date from the 1970s and are the work of revered church and cathedral architect Stephen Dykes Bower, a passionate adherent of Gothic design. The west gate was designed by the eminent garden designer George Carter and made at the historic Anwick Forge in Lincolnshire in 2014.
In the 16th century, Thomas Cromwell’s mansion was entered through ‘a fayre grete gate’ opening on to a ‘fayre yarde paved’. Though the mansion was long ago replaced by Drapers’ Hall, the courtyard remains, central to the comings and goings of daily life.
It was refashioned in the 1860s and Edward Wyon , a sculptor whose work included modelling busts and figures for Wedgwood, was commissioned to create reliefs for the tympana about the doors and windows. Each of the four walls illustrates a different theme: Commerce distributing the products of Industry (with the head of Jason in the centre); Religion, the Old and New Testaments; Science; and Justice and Peace.
The Courtyard’s 18th century lead statute of “The boy with a thorn in his foot” (a copy of the famous Graeco-Roman bronze “Spinario”) originally stood in the garden
